Qld election 2024: Labor, LNP’s crime policies compared

Queensland’s major parties are offering terrible, or too few, solutions to youth crime, stakeholders say. COMPARE THE PLANS

Premier Steven Miles and Opposition Leader David Crisafulli have been slammed over their youth crime solutions.

Queensland’s major political parties are offering terrible, or too few, solutions to address youth crime, as the issue splits Labor and the LNP in this election campaign, stakeholders say.

For four years the LNP has prosecuted what it calls the “crime crisis” gripping the state and has positioned the issue at the centre of its campaign to form government.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has argued the Labor government’s watering down of laws when Annastacia Palaszczuk came to power almost a decade ago has created a “generation of untouchables” now running riot across the state.

Premier Steven Miles, in his 10 months in the top job, has moved to restrengthen them by reintroducing breach of bail as an offence, reopening courts to media and adding several police helicopters across the state.

Labor has attempted to avoid speaking about crime during the four-week campaign, but has splashed cash at rehabilitation programs in what it says is an “evidence-based” effort to reduce youth crime.

The LNP’s laundry list of policies in the campaign compares to few from Labor, which argues its policies introduced by Mr Miles in the past year are bearing fruit.

Combined, stakeholders argue both parties have let Queenslanders down.

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Youth Advocacy Centre chief executive Katherine Hayes lauded the LNP’s plan to build two remote facilities the party has dubbed “circuit breakers” – where young offenders undergo intensive rehabilitation but there are no individual holding cells.

Ms Hayes said the model – known as the Spanish Diagrama system – had been used globally with much success, cutting recidivism rates to about 20 per cent.

She said moving to a 12-month post-detention transition plan, up from the current 72 hours, was fantastic.

Premier Steven Miles in Cairns on Monday. Picture: Adam Head

But moves to lock more children up and for longer, including through the LNP’s “adult crime, adult time” plan and isolating children for a minimum period for bad behaviour when they’re behind bars is “really bad”, she said.

And the delay to the Wacol Youth Remand Centre, coupled with the timing of the LNP’s harsher youth sentencing, will mean another horrid summer of overflowing watch houses and child prisons.

“It’s accepted across the entire world by any expert as being damaging for anybody, in particular kids, is psychologically damaging, and will harm them further,” Ms Hayes said.

On Labor’s scant election platform on youth justice Ms Hayes said she was disappointed. “No innovation, not doing anything differently,” she said.

Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive Aimee McVeigh said policies from both major parties would result in more children behind bars, including across the state’s inadequate watch houses.

“Community safety should legitimately be a focus of anyone seeking to govern the state,” she said.

“The next thing to do then is to look at what policies, laws, and investment helps to keep the community safe, and then look at the cost benefit analysis.

“And what we’re seeing on the table are policy decisions which will cost us a lot in terms of dollars, and which are proven not to work.”

Youth Advocacy Centre CEO Katherine Hayes

Amnesty International’s Indigenous rights spokeswoman Kacey Teerman took aim at the LNP’s plan to use minimum isolation periods for youths who behave badly in detention.

“Amnesty International is alarmed by the LNP’s proposal to introduce mandatory isolation periods for children in youth detention,” she said.

“Many of these children already spend far too much time locked in their cells due to staff shortages, and because Queensland’s detention centres are simply not fit for purpose.”

“Prolonging their isolation will not solve any problems; it will only deepen the trauma they are experiencing and increase the likelihood of reoffending.”

This campaign, criminal expert and former Queensland Law Society president Bill Potts criticised politicians for failing to address the causes of crime.

“It is a sad indictment on our society that instead of having a serious discussion about preventing crime – we don’t first discuss the causes of crime,” he said.

“Both sides come to the election with the tragedy of short-termism, to say they hold a law and order option to say who’s tougher on crime and who has the answers to satisfy a fearful electorate every four years.”

He also said the LNP’s plan to create a public sex offender register would not address the causes of child sexual abuse and declared the real solution was better-targeted at policing and effective use of existing laws.

Originally published as Qld election 2024: Labor, LNP’s crime policies compared