Report finds no value for money at bail houses at Logan Reserve and Cornubia

Two youth bail houses in Brisbane’s south have been fingered as being costly, under-utilised and recording serious curfew breaches forcing the Youth Justice Minister to leap to their defence.

A report has found a high level of breaches at the state’s four bail houses including the two in Logan.

TWO bail houses in Logan have come under scrutiny this week after costings for the state’s four facilities were revealed.

A report called Supervised Community Accommodation program, said taxpayers paid nearly $10 million for the service last financial year and said it was not value for money.

Four bail houses were set up in 2017 — at Logan Reserve and Cornubia and two in Townsville.

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They were designed to keep young people on remand out of regular youth detention with those volunteering to live there.

The report said there had been “moderate occupancy” with only about 60 participants at the four houses in the first 18 months.

There were 529 “critical incidents” reported at the four centres with the majority for breaching curfew.

A breakdown in the report indicated that it cost $2600 a day for each bail house teen, double that of a person in a regular jail.

Shadow Attorney-General David Janetzki slammed the program as a “spectacular failure”.

“Not only is it costing taxpayers millions but it simply doesn’t work,” he said.

But Youth Justice Minister Di Farmer said it was early days in the program and the government would refine to get the best outcomes.

“The best way to keep the Logan community safe was to prevent young people from committing crimes in the first place,” she said.

“Supervised Community Accommodation are one of a range of initiatives we’re trialling to reduce offending and reoffending, and we are seeing some early success from a number of these initiatives,” she said.

“The evidence we have from other places is that it can take a couple of years to get the SCA model right.

“At the moment, occupancy rates at the Logan SCA are above 90 per cent and we are seeing some good stories for the young people going through the facility.

“We will continue to monitor SCAs, and we’ll continue to improve and refine the SCA model to get the best outcomes we can for the Logan community.”