More than 80 per cent of serious young offenders are addicted to ‘ice’

It was a statistic dropped at a Queensland minister’s media conference evaluating four years of tackling persistent serious young offenders, some as young as nine years of age.

Just one figure in an hour-long, statistics-rich media conference about youth crime.

“Eighty-three per cent of these young people have used ice, or methamphetamine,” said Bob Gee, a former police deputy commissioner, now director-general of Queensland’s Department of Youth Justice.

‘I have watched a 12-year-old girl inject directly into her arm’, former police officer Bob Gee says as he explains 83 per cent of persistent youth offenders have used ice or methylamphetamines.Credit: Tony Moore

“I have watched a 12-year-old girl directly inject meth into her arm.”

The media conference paused and looked at him. He didn’t flinch.

Sadly, the rise of methylamphetamine use – speed or ice – is old news.

But its blunt link to very, very young offenders is a shock. Combined with an unstable family home, serious problems loom.

In 2018, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission reported Queensland and New South Wales had the biggest increase in methylamphetamine use in the country.

The same year former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a $100 million, four-year Ice Help program to provide well-trained counsellors to talk people out of ice addiction.

The 2018 idea there was to change tack; to reject the simple message that meth or ice was bad, and instead show that addiction – and the need for crime to feed the habit – would follow; like night follows day.

In 2024, the focus is tackling youth crime and the current policy is a network of youth justice workers and specialist police working in 13 regions across Queensland, given $11.2 million over two years.

In Logan, only a fortnight ago an amphetamine ring was busted in broad daylight.

Youth Justice Minister Di Farmer – one of many Labor ministers feeling the pressure from the LNP’s well mobilised, anti-youth crime language ahead of the October 26 state poll, wants the facts to speak.

“This evaluation shows that where these repeat offenders may have offended – on average 25 times in a month – that has been reduced to seven times a month,” Farmer said.

“The independent evaluation (by the Nous Group) has shown a significant reduction in theft, break and enter and illegal use of as a motor vehicle.

“It has shown a 73 per cent reduction in offending by our serious repeat offenders.”

What the Queensland Government’s July 2024 Co-Responder Team Report says

• Between mid-2020 and March 2024 had 90,000 meetings with at risk young people
• 6000 engagements per month; mostly between 2pm and 10pm. Rarely in mornings.
• 49 per cent of these engagements are with 15- to 17-year-olds
• 38 per cent with 12- to-14 year olds
• 7 per cent with nine- to 11-year-olds
• 46 per cent are First Nations young people
• 39 per cent are girls, or young women

What the report shows

• Serious young offenders who committed 25 offences in the six months before meeting with one of the youth co-responder teams, committed seven offences in the six months afterward.

Source: Department of Youth Justice Youth Co-Responder Outcome Evaluation.

Farmer acknowledged breaking the link between repeat offenders and amphetamines was “a significant issue” in a complex set of circumstances.

“Young people in this system are characterised by one of more of the issues including dometic violence, poverty, substance abuse, having one of more parents incarnation and disengagement from education,” she said.

She said the programs were designed to help young offenders while they are “in the system”.

“But we are starting right from the beginning,” she said frankly pointing out the fetal blood alcohol syndrome meant an alcoholic mother frequently left her child sadly at risk of alcoholism.

She said the youth co-responder teams now referred the young offenders to organisations like the Ted Noffs Foundation, which focuses on breaking links between crime and drugs.