Queensland’s tough youth crime agenda slammed in human rights report
A global human rights report has criticised the Queensland government’s tough approach on young offenders and says Australia now has a blemished record due to its treatment of children in contact with the criminal justice system.
Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2025 found roughly 700 children between the ages of 10 and 17 are detained or imprisoned across Australia on any given day, with First Nations children comprising approximately 60 per cent of the prison population.
The report highlighted significant concerns for children in contact with Australia’s youth justice system, including those subjected to harsh conditions such as solitary confinement, forced to wear spit hoods, and held in facilities designed for adults as routinely occurs in Queensland and Western Australia.
Accommodation cells in the Boys’ unit at the Cairns watch-house taken from the ‘Cairns and Murgon watch‑houses inspection report’ delivered September, 2024. Credit: Queensland Ombudsman
It noted that most Australian states enforce an age of criminal responsibility below the UN-recommended minimum of at least 14 years, including Queensland where children as young as 10 are considered criminally responsible and can be incarcerated.
The HRW report adds to a growing list of concerns for the state’s treatment of young people, with Queensland’s own attorney-general admitting changes to youth justice laws introduced last year were incompatible with the Human Rights Act 2019 and international standards for children.
One of the key issues raised in the HRW report can be traced back to 2023 when the then-Labor government passed controversial laws allowing contingencies for police watch houses and adult prisons to be used as youth detention centres, overriding the state’s human rights act.
Watch houses are designed for short-term detention of adults and advocates have routinely argued they are “not appropriate places to hold children, potentially exposing them to violent and antisocial adult behaviour”.
HRW cited an inspection report tabled in parliament in September that evaluated the standards of the Cairns and Murgon watch houses currently used to hold children, sometimes for weeks at a time.
It found overcrowding and a lack of natural light in the Cairns watch house and no access to fresh air for children held in Murgon. Both lacked privacy regarding access to toilets and inappropriate management of at-risk children.
An over-representation of Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander children, many already vulnerable and experiencing significant health complexities and traumatic backgrounds, was also noted.
In August, a review of the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville found a severe shortage of staff, leading to children being locked in rooms alone for extended periods of time.
The practice, known as separation, can affect children’s psychological wellbeing and raised significant human rights issues.
Separation rooms are part of the design for the new youth detention centres currently under construction in Woodford and Cairns.
A third new prison for children, the Wacol Youth Remand Centre, has been delayed until mid-2025, forcing the Crisafulli government to keep using the Caboolture Watchhouse to hold young people.
The 31-bed facility was temporarily transformed into a youth detention facility in 2023 but was due to go offline in December and revert to an adult watch house.
Inspection reports evaluating the standards for children detained in the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre, Southern Queensland Detention Centre and West Moreton Detention Centre are underway and due in the next 12 months.
The HRW report was released amid a renewed debate over Queensland’s youth crime laws after the arrest of a 13-year-old boy who allegedly stabbed a Coles worker in a supermarket.
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