This was published 8 years ago
Queensland to remove 17-year-olds from adult prisons
By Cameron Atfield
Seventeen-year-olds will no longer be kept in Queensland's adult prisons under reforms announced by the Palaszczuk government on Wednesday.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said legislation would be introduced into the Queensland Parliament next week.
Ms Palaszczuk said the move had been a long time coming and it would become law within 12 months.
The Premier also announced her cabinet had endorsed a youth justice review, to look into the practices, operation and oversight of Queensland's youth detention centres.
Queensland will stop detaining 17-year-olds in adult prisons.
That review will be conducted by Professor Megan Davis, the chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples and Queensland barrister Kathryn McMillan, QC.
"It's a historic day, a very significant day for Queensland and one we can be immensely proud of," Ms Palaszczuk said.
The need for new facilities for older juvenile offenders, which could include wings at existing youth detention centres, would be considered over the next year.
There were 48 17-year-olds in the state's adult prisons at the time of the announcement.
Corrective Service Minister Bill Byrne, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath announce changes to youth detention in Queensland.Credit: Cameron Atfield
Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath conceded the new legislation would be of little help to those detainees.
"You cannot pick up 48, as it is today, 48 17-year-olds and put them into the two youth detention centres today without going over capacity and, ourselves, being in breach of the number of young people held in any particular facility," she said.
"Also, it's important to understand that it's not just the 48 that are in our adult prison system, there is another 200 on community orders that are overseen by Queensland Corrective Services.
"As soon as this law comes into effect, all of those 17-year-olds who are being overseen by the Corrective Services officers will transfer over to Youth Justice and I need to make sure I've got the Youth Justice workers on the ground, who will then case manage all of those 200 offenders though the youth justice system."
Corrective Services Minister Bill Byrne bristled at the suggestion the policy could be interpreted as the Palaszczuk government being soft on crime.
"I'm fully prepared for that sort of criticism and I think it is completely ill-informed and unfounded," he said.
"… It's an ill-informed and partisan position that is not going to be helpful to the longer term well-being of our communities."
There was no such soft-on-crime criticism coming from Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls on Wednesday, although he did decry the government's "dictatorial and knee-jerk" approach.
Mr Nicholls said shadow attorney-general Ian Walker had written to Ms D'Ath on August 18 seeking input into the process, a letter he said was ignored.
"The opposition has a very important role to play in the outcome of this legislation," he said.
"We haven't seen it, we don't know what's going to happen and that's simply because the government is arrogantly making the decisions without consultation."
Mr Nicholls said it was a complex issue and several questions needed to be resolved.
"Firstly, by the time 17-year-olds are in detention, or are in prison, they have been through a very stringent process.
"They've been convicted; they've not just taken a car around the block for a joy ride.
"This isn't the first time that they're there. So, we've got to be very careful about moving sometimes violent offenders who are 17 into youth detention centres with kids as young as 10.
"How is that going to be handled?"
But those mechanics were secondary to those who had campaigned for years on the issue.
Sisters Inside chief executive Debbie Kilroy said it was a "historical and exciting" development.
"I'm quite overwhelmed with emotion, because I was one of those 17-year-olds locked up at Boggo Road many, many decades ago," she said.
Ms Kilroy said being incarcerated as a 17-year-old was a deeply traumatising experience that led many to a slippery slope towards a life of crime and imprisonment.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service Queensland chief executive Shane Duffy said he felt "overwhelmed" at the decision.
"It's taken some 20 or so years to make a decision about moving 17-year-olds out of adult correctional facilities," he said.
While she welcomed the "exciting" move, Youth Advocacy Centre director Janet Wight said she had some sympathy for those who were already in custody and would not see the benefits of legislative change.
"That is a bit of a problem by the fact that we've got a time period we need to work through," she said.
"Having said that, the Premier and the Attorney (General) gave a commitment this morning that they would look at changes within the system on an interim basis to try and improve the situation for those 17-year-olds, so we would hope they will be able to fulfil that commitment."
Ms Wight said 17-year-olds were treated as children in almost every other aspect of society.
"We'd almost given up hope this would happen," she said.
The move, which was a 2015 election promise, came in the wake of footage that emerged of a 17-year-old inmate being put into what appeared to be a spit mask, but Mr Byrne insisted it was a helmet.