Opinion: Think there’s more crime around? You’d be right

Some 10 months after it was due to be released, the Queensland Government has finally released the state’s Crime Report. The figures don’t look good, writes Terry Goldsworthy.

Another day, another crime, welcome to Queensland. The Queensland Crime report was released last week by the state government, some 10 months overdue.

Perhaps it is little surprise that the government was not keen to share the latest crime data. Reported crime for 2019/20 increased by 2 per cent, the crime rate was up by 0.3 per cent.

In fact, over the last nine years, the Queensland crime rate has risen 15.4 per cent. Compare this to Victoria which had a crime increase of only 9 per cent over a similar period.

If you think more crime is occurring in our society, you would be right. The latest data shows that for the last 12 months we have seen increases in the rate of many offences.

Murder is up 18.5 per cent, robbery 6 per cent, stolen vehicles 6 per cent, break and enters 3 per cent, drug offences almost 7 per cent.

In recent weeks we have been witness to several horrific domestic-related homicides. Little wonder when breaches of domestic violence orders have increased by 18 per cent in the last 12-month period, and by a staggering 188 per cent over the last nine years.

The Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Board identified that protection orders were present in 35 per cent of intimate partner homicides and 24 per cent of family homicides.

In the wake of the most recent killing, that of Kelly Wilkinson on the Gold Coast, Assistant Commissioner Brian Codd admitted that ultimately the system had failed despite the victim interacting with police on several occasions.

We need to get serious about domestic violence and consider mandatory imprisonment for those who use violence or are repeat offenders in terms of breaching protection orders. We need to show that hitting your partner is worth more than a fine.

Our rate of stolen vehicle offending is almost five times that of NSW and two and half times that of Victoria. Little wonder that over the last four years the number of stolen vehicles in Queensland has climbed by 33 per cent, whilst the number in NSW and Victoria has declined by 8 and 28 per cent, respectively.

Stolen cars have been one of the biggest growth offences for youth offenders over the last 10 years, second only to drug offending by young people. Despite this we still have a no pursuit policy which hamstrings police and only encourages criminals to drive more dangerously as soon as the police see them.

The government has passed new laws aimed at reducing youth offending.

They included a trial of GPS monitoring devices for high-risk repeat offenders and a presumption against bail for serious repeat offenders who commit a crime while on bail. Sounds good, but the devil is in the detail.

There is no breach of bail offence for youth offenders. The Labor government removed this offence in 2016.

Dr Terry Goldsworthy. Picture: Richard Gosling

So, we now have the situation that when police find a youth offender out at night in breach of bail conditions with an ankle tracker on, there is no offence for the police to act on. It is simply a ludicrous situation.

Youth offenders are over represented in serious crime, making up 51 per cent of our offenders for robbery and 40 per cent for stolen vehicles. We need to allow our police to manage hardcore youth offenders.

We see a police service in disarray. The restructuring of former commissioner Ian Stewart was seen to be a dismal failure as evidenced in the Greenfield report by external consultants.

New Commissioner, Katarina Carroll, has now been undertaking a service “realignment”. Based on this she announced that police would no longer attend break and enters.

Such a move defies common sense. Without police involvement these matters will go unreported, the quality of reporting will decline and many more will go unsolved.

No surprise then that within weeks the Police Union threatened industrial action and the rollout was “paused”.

Papering over the cracks will not fix crime in Queensland. The people of Queensland deserve real action that will deliver real results.

Dr Terry Goldsworthy is associate professor, criminology, Bond University