The (not so) quiet plan to fix youth prison pressure with police cells

It’s almost become a cliche to recite the words of a younger Palaszczuk government back to itself – particularly on crime and youth justice.

But, as with all worn-out forms of words, it comes from a place of truth. And that truth is Labor has seemingly failed to turn past words into action.

Experts have been warning the Queensland government for years that it’s “tough” youth justice policies would only worsen repeat offending.

“If we do not address the causes of offending and reoffending, then all we will be able to promise Queenslanders is that we will build more and more detention centres now and into the future and we will never break the cycle,” then-Youth Justice Minister Di Farmer said in 2019.

And build detention centres they have – and plan to again, and again, and again.

The government has now confirmed, after quietly hinting since its last extraordinary week in parliament, that it will turn the new Caboolture watch house into a lock-up for kids “awaiting admission” to the centres.

A department spokesperson suggests this is part of an “interim solution” to capacity issues the government first mentioned alongside a punitive policy crackdown in February, then went quiet on.

Last month’s controversial and apparently urgent amendments rushed through by the government will allow this to happen.

Meanwhile, other watch houses statewide will still be used as normal for dozens of young people each day.

The Caboolture site is planned to hold up to 31 youths on remand with support from the education and health departments, legal advocates and Murri Watch.

This is on top of the two new “therapeutic” centres planned to be running in Woodford and Cairns some time in 2026, despite the declining rate of youth offenders hitting a 10-year low.

For all its insistence that recent crackdowns don’t contradict expired plans and evidence-based work also happening to help stop the flow of (overwhelmingly First Nations) youths behind bars, the government’s groaning detention centres suggest otherwise.

After taking the dual crown of the largest and most at-capacity youth prison cohort in the country for the 2021-22 financial year, Queensland’s figures have only risen further.

Across that period, the average nightly youth prison population was 274.9 in the state’s 288 permanently funded beds for a so-called centre utilisation rate of 95.5 per cent.

In the larger states of NSW and Victoria, an average of fewer than 186.6 young people were in detention centres across 2021-22 – about or less than half their centres’ capacity.

New department data provided to Brisbane Times shows between June 2022 and July 2023, the Queensland utilisation rate had lifted to 97 per cent of 306 “built” beds.

A total of 294 young people were in the state’s three detention centres as of last Thursday.

“The increase in utilisation is attributable to tightening policy, legislation changes and population growth,” a department spokesperson said.

While the government justified last month’s effort with unreleased advice about watchhouse practice legal questions and warnings of offenders being let out, capacity pressures are already contributing to court decisions granting young people bail.

“If we send them to detention, if we lock them up and throw away the key, we know that they are almost guaranteed to reoffend.”

Youth Justice Minister Di Farmer in 2018.

The ability of detention centres and staff to even provide rehabilitative services for those sentenced to detention is also an issue.

Let alone the sometimes lengthy stays in adult police cells which nearly all, from police to the LNP, agree are unsuitable for kids and teens; or the links between any detention and repeat offending.

“If we send them to detention, if we lock them up and throw away the key, we know that they are almost guaranteed to reoffend,” Farmer herself said in 2018.

The state’s Human Rights Commissioner, Scott McDougall, remembers well when revelations about watchhouse conditions boiled over a year later. He is now worried about a repeat this summer when detention demand swells further.

Set for his first meeting with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in five years, McDougall told me last week transparency around long watchhouse stays and government plans to reduce detention demand were key.

“That’s what is so troubling about this issue – the government has been aware that the policy decisions it has made in the last few years would dramatically increase the demand for youth detention beds, and they have wilfully ignored the advice of experts in taking the steps to avoid this impending disaster,” he said.

“We have to ask ourselves what are we doing in Queensland that is driving so much demand for youth detention centre beds.”

This week, we will get more detail on a new advisory group focused on crime victims’ lacklustre experiences with the justice system.

Unless it plans to promise even more new youth prisons, and the repeat offending which tends to come from them, the government must also explain how else it will address the cycles driving that crime.

Heads up

• The High Court’s decision on former public trustee Peter Carne’s years-long legal fight to stop the public release of a Crime and Corruption Commission report, with potentially further reaching ripples, is scheduled for 10am Wednesday. Watch this space.
• Queensland’s MPs will also return to parliament this week for a three-day sitting set to include the passage of bills cracking down on cosmetic surgeons and loosening, eventually, restrictions on identifying accused sexual offenders before they are committed to stand trial.

Catch up

• Palaszczuk fronted media on Monday after returning to anonymous internal leadership questions simmering over her two-week break. But the press conference hadn’t finished before she was asked by one journalist if apparent real-time criticism from “within government” of her decision stay in the top job into the next election concerned her. “Well, unless they’re going to put their name to it,” the seemingly off-guard premier managed.
• It was a week for some political retirement announcements though, with the LNP’s 11-year Burleigh MP Michael Hart announcing he would not seek re-election next October. The party’s 15-year Marchant ward representative in Brisbane City Council, Fiona Hammond, also joined the ranks of those saying goodbye to City Hall.