Des Houghton: Kids should do adult time for adult crimes

This hardline politician’s view that children who commit adult crimes like rape or murder be tried like adults – and, where appropriate, be sent to jail for life – is a good one, writes Des Houghton. HAVE YOUR SAY IN OUR POLL

Campbell Newman was howled down in 2015 when he proposed boot camps to give juvenile offenders a “taste of challenge and excitement”.

Newman later said boot camps were set up in an “experimental way” and said that they showed “great promise”.

The snivelling Left couldn’t stomach the idea of boot camps and the incoming Palaszczuk government scrapped them on ideological grounds.

Foolishly, the then-Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath branded them a failure even though the trial had not finished.

Newman and his Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie saw youth detention as a way to develop self-discipline in young offenders and perhaps teach them some new skills.

Would it have gone some way in stopping violent home invasions and car thefts? I suspect so.

Now Robbie Katter proposes a similar plan.

The Katter’s Australian Party Leader and Member for Traeger said recidivist youth offenders should be ordered by courts to serve long-term sentences in “highly rehabilitative environments strategically situated in remote locations such as cattle stations”.

It’s a great idea. Katter is a hardliner.

He wants children who commit adult crimes like rape or grievous bodily harm and murder to be tried like adults and, where appropriate, be sent to jail for life.

He said community anger against juvenile offenders was “white hot” in Katter country and many other Queensland regions