Queensland Premier Steven Miles has hauled Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll into the cabinet room for the first time, eight months out from the state election at which youth crime will be a vote-changer.
It’s five years into Carroll’s tenure as top cop, and years after the issue started hurting the government.
So why now?
Cynically, the cabinet briefing is all about optics.
We're taking action to get knives off our streets. pic.twitter.com/rhE2tKw6GX
— Steven Miles (@StevenJMiles) February 12, 2024
Parliament opens for the year on Tuesday, and the opposition is sharpening its accusations that the Miles Labor government is weak on crime.
The grieving family of Ipswich grandmother Vyleen White – allegedly stabbed to death by a teenager on bail – says the Premier has failed to come up with any new solutions.
Miles calling in Carroll gives the perception of action. But, as Right to Information documents revealed, Miles conceded after another alleged murder in late 2022 that the government had used “almost everything in the cupboard” in an attempt to tackle youth crime.
The issue is complex, generational, and intractable. Much to the Premier’s dismay, it does not have an easy solution, and some voters are furious.
Early in its term, the Palaszczuk government made detention a last resort for kids. But last year, it swung sharply the other way, overriding its own Human Rights Act, twice, making breach of bail an offence for kids, expanding a trial of GPS trackers, and introducing serious repeat offender declarations.
As Children’s Court president Deborah Richards notes in her 2022-23 annual report, the legal changes have increased the number of children in detention, but there’s been no decrease in offending. Crucially, there are more serious repeat offenders, and they are committing more crimes.
Youth detention centres and police watchhouses are now overflowing with children. Last financial year, the average daily number of children in detention was 249, up from 170 in 2019-20.
A startling 8119 children – including those aged as young as 10 and 11 – were locked up in watchhouses last year.
New facilities are being built. But staff shortages mean some children are in solitary confinement for weeks, away from education, exercise, and other people.
Law and order is often an election issue, but it has rarely been felt so widely. No matter where they live, voters are likely to have had a brush with crime. Either their house has been broken into, a neighbour’s has, or someone in their suburban Facebook group has shared security footage of an attempted robbery.
Labor sources say regional focus groups report a sentiment that the government is failing on crime and, even though voters doubt the LNP’s policies would work, they are willing to give David Crisafulli’s party a go.
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