The editor: Stop tinkering and get serious on youth crime

It’s taken a tough old judge to give a full-throated voice to the thoughts of millions of Queenslanders, that violent teen criminals are getting away with a slap on the wrist, and reoffending knowing there will rarely be serious consequences.

It’s taken a tough old judge to give a full-throated voice to the thoughts of millions of Queenslanders.

Former District Court judge Clive Wall, with vast experience in dealing with criminal matters across this state, says pretty much what ordinary Queenslanders have been saying for years.

Violent teen criminals are getting away with a slap on the wrist, and walking off to reoffend in the full knowledge there will rarely be serious consequences for their criminal behaviour while they remain officially classified as children.

Mr Wall wants more youth detention centres built, victims of crime given the right to appeal sentences, and a new boot camp trial.

Mr Wall retired in 2016 but was always willing to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies when on the bench.

Just one day before retirement he criticised the Court of Appeal, declaring that “too much emphasis is placed on accused people at the expense of victims, and that is all encouraged by the Court of Appeal’’.

Former District Court judge Clive Wall. Picture: Tim Marsden

He believes matters have deteriorated since 2013 as juvenile crime rises and juvenile criminals continue to be unpunished in any meaningful sense.

The state government, he says, is merely tinkering with the issue of juvenile crime and juvenile recidivists.

It is pretending to be serious “but just making simple changes to a serious problem”.

The reports of juvenile crime keep appearing in media even as the Labor government bowed to pressure last month and removed detention as a last resort in the Juvenile Justice Act.

Another Queensland resident, who also happens to be a former state premier, had added his voice to the frustration and anger.

Campbell Newman, in our “High Steaks’’ column in The Sunday Mail today, suggests crime is a direct result of intergenerational Labor administrations which have created a culture of acceptance around offending, especially among juveniles.

There is a growing sense of mayhem, leaving residents such as Newman not merely locking their homes up at night but locking themselves in their own bedrooms to avoid confrontations with possible intruders.

There is still more room for the state to turn the dial on tough policies and now is the time to do it.