QLD crime crisis: Surge in domestic violence offences eclipses even youth crime crisis
For all the focus on youth crime and car theft, there is one problem where offending has surged faster and even more police time is being chewed up. So why aren’t we talking about it?
Gold Coast
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The Courier-Mail’s front page on Monday morning was straight to the point. “Afraid and angry” the headline stated. “Exclusive polling reveals a state living in fear”.
The fear in question was in relation to the youth crime crisis, which centres most particularly around car thefts and the home break-ins that offenders undertake to access keys.
Of 1500 people surveyed by pollsters on behalf of the Courier Mail, 56 per cent of people living in regional Queensland were said they felt somewhat or very unsafe in their home and community due to youth crime.
The equivalent figure for South East Queensland residents was 41 per cent. The majority blamed the state government, with 66 per cent of respondents saying it had been “too soft” on the problem.
The fear articulated in the survey is, of course, highly understandable.
Who would not be afraid when an innocent elderly woman, Vyleen White, can be stabbed at a Redbank Plains shopping centre, allegedly by youths whose interest was in stealing her humble Hyundai Getz?
Who would not be afraid by the near daily reports of youths armed with everything from baseball bats to imitation firearms breaking into Gold Coast homes and stealing the keys to vehicles? Who would not be afraid when they witness youths barely old enough to see over steering wheels tearing up and down our highways in stolen vehicles at high speed?
But despite all this, it may surprise some readers to know that the youth crime crisis is not the biggest issue facing police or our city.
That there is an even more insidious problem that statistics suggest is eating up twice as much police and court resources.
One where the threat of physical violence is in fact far greater, and the fear felt by victims all the more real.
One not captured easily on home security cameras, providing footage that can alert the community to the danger on social media.
The offence most commonly associated with youth crime is unlawful use of a motor vehicle.
Last year there were 2781 such offences recorded by police on the Gold Coast. In 2014 there were 1489 cases recorded by police. So across 10 years, the problem has almost doubled.
But consider this.
Last year there were 5252 breaches of Domestic Violence Orders (DVOs) recorded. Far more than the number of car thefts. And almost five times the 1081 offences recorded in 2014.
It’s clearly been a very significant part of the “exponential increase” in police work referenced by Commissioner Katarina Carroll when she announced yesterday that she was stepping down.
“In one year, to have a 25 per cent increase in domestic violence, that’s unheard of,” she said.
Those breach of DVO numbers are far more than just statistics.
They represent real people, enduring real trauma.
Many of whom are living in fear.
In those 10 years we have seen on the Gold Coast the cases of Kelly Wilkinson, Teresa Bradford, Shelsea Schilling, Melinda Horner, Karina Lock, Tara Brown and Fabiana Palhares.
Want to talk about being fearful in your own home? Then we need to talk more about what these women went through. Ms Wilkinson’s sister Danielle Carroll spelled it our clearly in an interview with the Gold Coast Bulletin in April 2021.
“(Kelly suffered) months, years of abuse,” she said. “She came forward and said ‘I am scared for my life, I am scared for my children’s life. We are not safe’.
“She was saying this to the police over and over and nothing was done. There was no support, there was no safeguard.”
The scale of the problem on the Gold Coast is not just evident in the statistics. Spend a bit of time in the public pews at Southport Magistrates Court, as this columnist did on Monday, and you’ll be left in little doubt about what is going on.
Case after harrowing case of DVO breaches. Each one representing a woman, a family, living with fear.
It’s fair and understandable that the youth crime wave makes people fearful. I feel it myself at times. And it is unquestionably a drain on police resources.
But the domestic violence problem in this city is bigger again. It’s killing and hurting more people. Causing a raw fear that few of us would ever want to experience. And putting even greater demands on the courts and the police.
It may even, in ways, be contributing to the youth crime epidemic – how many of these wayward kids are coming from homes broken by the scourge of domestic violence?
It’s an issue that should be demanding just as much attention.
So why are we not talking more about it?
Originally published as QLD crime crisis: Surge in domestic violence offences eclipses even youth crime crisis
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