Opinion: Police, teachers pay for government ineptitude

With youth crime and violence out of control, it is no wonder young police officers and teachers are leaving these vital professions in droves, writes Kylie Lang.

Choosing to become a police officer is like opting to teach: who’d be game?

These once “noble” professions are now riddled with rot – with youth crime and violence completely out of control. There are other crippling common denominators too, such as poor professional mentoring and support, and a lack of government muscle to tackle growing problems.

Is it any wonder recruits bail within the first few years on the job? Even with the best of intentions – including to positively impact our communities – police officers and teachers are hamstrung before they even get going.

On Thursday The Courier-Mail reported that hundreds of Queensland state school preppies – kids as young as four – were disciplined for physical violence against teachers and classmates last year. Year 5 students – nine and 10-year-olds – were suspended for misconduct involving illicit substances.

Police officers and teachers are hamstrung before they even get going.

Many of these kids, who learn their anti-social behaviours at home, are on track to become the career criminals police collar with frustrating regularity. This week we also read the findings of a damning report into the myriad failings of the Palaszczuk government in curbing youth crime.

The Youth Justice Reform Review, sneakily released at 8.17pm on Tuesday to miss The Courier-Mail’s print deadline, revealed in the six months after new laws were passed in April 2021, youth offending had soared.

The 168-page report – released eight months after it was handed to the government because why rush things? – found there had been an increase in the Serious Repeat Offender Index, with average daily remand numbers “consistently high between May and November 2021”. “The proportion of young people offending on bail increased from 47 per cent in 2019 to 53 per cent in 2021.”

And get this: The number of bailed youths who committed a further offence that led to serious harm or death increased from 60 to 78.

Children and Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard says the report showed reforms were working.

Thanks for nothing, team Palaszczuk. I’m unsure how the minister responsible, Leanne Linard, deduces the government’s youth justice reforms are working but she wants us to believe, as she said this week, that “we have put community safety first since we came into government and when Queenslanders said they wanted more done, we did more”.

Yet here we are, at the end of 2022, with the law and order system under repeated and deserved fire.

We have audio proof of alarming racism at the Brisbane Watchhouse, revealed this week by a whistleblower, and a police commissioner clinging to her job after a horrendous six months, including evidence of misogyny, sexism and racism aired during the Commission of Inquiry into Queensland Police Service Responses to Domestic and Family Violence. I happen to know many teachers and police officers, and their complaints are sadly similar.

In the state system, teachers feel under-resourced and under-supported, basically left to fend for themselves as burnout rushes in.

Police officers, burdened by inaction from courts and legislators that sees juvenile offenders slapped on the wrist and released, feel the same.

As one said to me recently: “What’s the point of catching these kids when they’re back on the streets committing the same crimes?”

The QPS has copped a public caning over a culture that has been shown to be toxic and out of sync with community expectations.

But to taint all officers is unfair. Former police commissioner Bob Atkinson said this week, the “vast, vast majority” are good people and those who aren’t should be “dealt with appropriately”.

Bob Atkinson said the “vast, vast majority” of police officers are good people.

His comments were echoed by a Courier-Mail reader and retired senior police executive, Barry Turner, who wrote: “Blaming the police service and its leadership for the immature comments by a small minority will simply add fuel to destroying the morale of all the good officers who turn up for duty every day.

“Our crime problems are a societal issue and the police only get involved to pick up the pieces and then go home with, at times, memories of the horror that people are capable of inflicting on themselves and others.”

The same can be said for teachers, who also see the worst in people in a job that is becoming more complex everyday as “education” takes a back seat to tackling violence, addictions and other anti-social behaviour. The dedicated and principled police officers and teachers in our communities deserve not only our respect but also to be ably supported in the valuable work they try to do.

Shamefully, this is not happening and it’s high time the government invested in meaningful action instead of telling us how great things are when it’s clear they are not.

We need more good officers and educators, not fewer, but the incentives are simply not there.

Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail