Youth crime Qld: Ex-judge demands action to beef up laws, including trial of boot camps
Premier Steven Miles says he will meet with retired Judge Clive Wall after calls for action to beef up laws, including trialling youth boot camps and three to a cell.
Police & Courts
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One of Queensland’s toughest former judges has slammed inaction over spiralling youth crime and called for a raft of changes, including “beefing up” laws to make parents more accountable for their children’s offending.
Former District Court judge Clive Wall says violent teen criminals are getting away with “a slap on the wrist” and has accused the State Government of “mouthing platitudes” and “tinkering” with the problem.
He wants more youth detention centres built, victims of crime given the right to appeal sentences and a new boot camp trial.
Mr Wall, who retired in 2016 but was renowned for his hardline sentences during 20 years on the bench, spoke out after revelations last week that Gold Coast bus drivers were in fear of continual attacks and incidents involving young thugs and drug-addled passengers.
It followed the brutal bashing of a bus driver at Mudgeeraba last month after he confronted a group of teens over an alleged graffiti incident. He spent several days in hospital with serious injuries.
Mr Wall said “little if anything has changed” since he wrote a paper entitled “Is the Children’s Court Working?” in 2013, referencing a spate of violent youth crime incidents including attacks on bus drivers.
In the paper, he said juvenile crime appeared to be increasing while offenders were walking from court “smiling and laughing, usually after having received a reprimand or good behaviour order”.
“Look, I don’t think anything’s really changed since I delivered that paper, except that I think matters have gotten worse, and juvenile crime continues to be unpunished in any meaningful sense,” Mr Wall told the Sunday Mail.
“You’ve got juveniles bashing people, you’ve got them bashing bus drivers, destroying property, burning cars, and they’re getting a slap on the wrist.
“The government is tinkering with the issue of juvenile crime and juvenile recidivists.
“They pretend to be serious about the issue but they’re really just making simple changes to a serious problem.”
Premier Steven Miles said he will ask to meet with Mr Wall to discuss his calls.
“I’m going to ask to meet with that retired judge this week to hear firsthand what he thinks we need to do,” Mr Miles said.
“Can I say from reading the comments today, I largely agree with you, that’s why we have our community safety plan.”
The Miles Government last month bowed to pressure to reword the Juvenile Justice Act, replacing detention as a last resort with children “should be detained in custody, where necessary, including to ensure community safety”.
Mr Wall said while he supported the change, much more needed to be done and both the government and opposition were “mouthing platitudes”.
New youth detention centres are being built at Woodford and Cairns but Mr Wall said more would be needed – provided children’s court magistrates and judges started getting tougher.
He said too many children’s court magistrates and judges were still giving offenders “a slap on the wrist … and that’s just not the way to do it”.
“Clearly, detention is required more now because of the increasing number of juveniles offending, the serious nature of their offending and the extent to which many are recidivists (repeat offenders),” he said.
“Down at my local bowls club, everyone is of the same view: ‘why aren’t these people going to juvenile detention?’
“If there aren’t enough detention centres, the government should just build more of them or double the capacity of rooms. Put two people (detainees) in one room.
“I once inspected the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville and the conditions were much better than many of the juveniles who were detained there would have had on the outside.”
Mr Wall said controversial youth boot camps introduced by the former Newman government should be trialled again because they were not given enough of a chance.
“I don’t think the boot camps established under the former government were given an opportunity to work because not long after they were established, the government changed,” he said.
“I think there was potential for them to work, and certainly the community would favour something like that. Everything’s worth a try to stop juveniles from reoffending. Most of the problems are with reoffenders.”
Mr Wall said parental responsibility laws needed to be simplified and toughened to make it easier for parents to be held accountable for their children’s actions, as well as forced to pay compensation to victims.
His 2013 paper called for measures including parents being held responsible for offences committed by their children at night, and lowering the burden of proof for parental responsibility.
“No attention is really paid to that by governments,” he told the Sunday Mail.
“If parents were more aware of what orders could be made against them in relation to their children’s offending, they might do something more to stop them.
“I had a mother before me at Southport (District Court) once who asked me to send her child to detention because she couldn’t control him, and she didn’t oppose an order by me that she pay compensation for offences he had committed.
“No serious consideration has ever been made to parental compensation, or to the suggestion that I made (in the 2013 paper) for beefing up the provisions in relation to that aspect.”
Mr Wall also repeated his 2013 call for victims of youth crime to be given the right to appeal inadequate sentences.
Mr Wall said while he was not advocating wholesale youth detention, “you reach a stage where they’re not taking any notice of the sentences imposed on them”.
“And in that situation, it’s time to say ‘you’ve abused your chances, I’m now going to lock you up’,” he said.
“Some cases reach the stage when protection of the community is more important than the personal circumstances of the offender. I think we are well beyond that stage now.”
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli labelled the statement from Judge Clive Wall calling for a raft of changes and beefed up laws as “extraordinary”.
“This is an extraordinary intervention and it shows just how dire the situation is in a retired judge being willing to call this out on behalf of every Queenslander who’s living through the youth crime crisis,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“It’s happening in every corner of this state. It’s in people’s homes, it’s in their businesses. It’s on their streets. It’s in every corner of their lives.
“He had a front row seat and he’s now calling it out on behalf of every Queenslander.”
Mr Crisafulli said the decision to water down crime laws when the government came to power in 2015 sowed the seed of the youth crime crisis.
“It bells the cat on a generation of untouchables that have been created by watered down laws, watered down laws have led to fewer police and it’s created a generation of untouchables that has fueled the youth crime crisis,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“Queenslanders know it, the numbers show it, and when you have victim numbers that are now north of 200,000 per year it shows you how dire things have become.”
Mr Crisafulli labelled the current youth crime laws as broken and vowed to legislate the Making Queensland Safer Laws by the end of the year, if elected.
“The laws are broken, they were watered down and they created the crisis and until we’re serious about giving police the tools they need, this is just going to keep happening,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“The Making Queensland Safer Laws will provide the strength to police to do their job.
“I’m also serious about early intervention and we can’t have a situation where we’re not intercepting young people before a lifetime of crime.”
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