LNP Youth Crime plan: What they’ve got right – and wrong

The LNP wants kid crims to be treated as adults – but although their behaviour is horrific, there’s a far better word for them, writes Keith Woods.

When is someone evil, and when are they just dangerously stupid?

Very often, it comes down to their age.

One thing that has never ceased to amaze me in reporting on crime is the appearance and attitude of many young offenders.

Children – and they are children – of 12, 13, 14 years of age.

Often they are small, wispish characters with a look, not of innocence, but vacancy in their eyes.

I have seen the same image time and again across the Gold Coast. When you realise the crimes these kids are accused of committing, it never ceases to shock and surprise.

The community is rightly furious about the actions of these kids – most commonly stealing cars and racing them down the M1 at speeds that takes them and all they encounter within a whisker of a violent death.

They may look surprisingly innocent when you see them in police cars or the back of an ambulance, but these are the kids at the heart of our youth crime crisis.

Opposition David Crisafulli speaks at a news conference about his party’s ‘Adult Crime, Adult Time’ policy. Picture: Liam Kidston.

With an eye on the state election in October, the LNP have suggested that such children be tried as adults for their crimes.

Not just the most serious crimes like murder and manslaughter – anyone who has followed horrific stories like the murder of Jack Beasley in Surfers Paradise would surely agree that harsher penalties are warranted in such cases.

But also for the more common crimes of home and business break-ins, stealing cars and dangerous operation of motor vehicles.

The question is, will trying kids as adults for these offences help to reduce our spiralling youth crime rate? Will it thus help keep the community more safe?

LNP leader David Crisafulli certainly thinks so.

“It can’t continue the way things are, and adult crime, adult time sends the message. And if you look at the figures, it shows that messages matter,” he said on Monday.

“In the case of robbery with intent, there’s a 71 per cent decrease when people turn 18. That’s not by chance. That’s because there are consequences for that behaviour, that change when someone becomes 18. And this is a game changer and it says to the residents of Queensland that victims’ rights will come before the rights of offenders.”

While Mr Crisafulli is dead right that the rights of victims need to matter far more in our system, our court system especially, the deterrent argument is far less clear.

He is correct that certain crimes, car theft in particular, are dominated by people under 18. However it has long been accepted that has a lot more to do with the immaturity of young minds than any sentencing deterrents. There are abundant studies that bear that out.

It’s also worth spending some time at court and seeing how adult sentencing takes place. Anyone who thinks the kids gloves approach ends at 18 will soon be disabused of that notion.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: Gera Kazakov

The truth is, these young offenders do not worry about consequences because they simply don’t care what happens to them. They do things that could easily result in their own deaths. It’s not just that they show a complete disregard for the rights or safety of others – they don’t care about themselves.

Yes, they are that immature, and that stupid. Dangerously so.

The cause is often brutal home backgrounds, where deadbeat parents have not just failed to give them basic guidance on right and wrong, but even the bare necessities of life such as food and shelter. It leaves kids believing that normal life is harsh and that nobody cares about them, so in turn they don’t care about anyone else.

The most contribution to this whole debate – and isn’t that so often the case – came from Northern Territory senator Jacinta Price.

“I would suggest that you can’t have one lot of policy without also looking at the circumstances of these children,” Ms Price told ABC radio.

“If they are children who are experiencing domestic and family violence, sexual abuse with their families have failed them, then it’s up to the authorities to do something in order to protect those children so they don’t end up down there.

“I mean, you know, applying these sorts of sentences for crimes is at the other end of the issue. We need to be preventing this in the first instance so that kids don’t end up on that path.”

ESuarve founder Joseph Te Puni-Fromont. Picture: Glenn Campbell.

Encouragingly, while the ‘adult time, adult crime’ slogan has grabbed all the attention, this is something Mr Crisafulli also seems to readily accept.

It does not make such easy headlines, but his party has also committed to “delivering gold standard intervention programs to divert young people away from lives of crime”.

In Mr Crisafulli’s mind will be highly successful programs like ESuarve on the northern Gold Coast, of which he has been a prominent supporter.

More than any punishment a court can mete out, such programs are effective at making young people understand the consequences of their actions, and change their ways.

A recent Queensland Police study showed ESuarve was achieving extraordinary levels of success.

It’s also encouraging to see the LNP committing to a program providing “intensive support” for youths when they leave detention – as they inevitably will eventually, regardless of the length of sentence.

We need an evidence-based approach to this problem, and the evidence points to early intervention, not harsher sentencing, as the only truly effective solution.

Follow @keithjwoods