Steven Miles refuses to release modelling on youth justice changes

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has refused to release secret government modelling on how contentious changes to the state’s juvenile justice laws will impact capacity at overcrowded youth detention centres.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has refused to release secret government modelling on how contentious changes to the state’s juvenile justice laws will impact capacity at overcrowded youth detention centres.

In the wake of a horror poll last week, Mr Miles caved in to intense political pressure and introduced law changes on Wednesday to overhaul a legal principle that children be detained in custody only as a last resort.

Under draft laws, a new clause would be inserted that a child be detained “where necessary, including to ensure community safety, where other non-custodial measures of prevention and intervention would not be sufficient”.

Queensland’s peak legal bodies, the Bar Association and Law Society, have both denounced the changes, alongside youth advocacy groups that have warned the state was already imprisoning more youths than there was capacity for.

Hundreds of children are held in police watch houses across the state, some for weeks at a time, because of chronic bed shortages at the state’s three youth detention centres.

Mr Miles on Wednesday repeatedly refused to release internal department modelling on how changes would impact detention numbers.

“The modelling assured me the system will continue to be able to cope with anticipated detention numbers,” he said.

Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Queensland Bar Association president Damien O’Brien KC, who represents the state’s 1300 barrister, said detention of young offenders “greatly increases the prospect of recidivism”.

“The proposition that imprisonment is a punishment of last resort continues to apply to adult offenders in the vast majority of cases, and it seems incongruous that courts should be more readily able to detain children in custody,” he said. “This is particularly so given the shortage of available space in juvenile detention facilities means that children are, unacceptably, being detained in adult watch houses.”

Queensland Law Society president Rebecca Fogerty said the draft rewording would put more pressure on an incredibly strained youth justice system and likely result in tragedy.

“Queensland’s youth detention centres are already at capacity, with children and young people being placed in horrific conditions in watch houses as a result,” she said.

Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli said the changes did not go far enough and still required judges to consider other methods of intervention.

“The government wanted a narrative that they are removing detention as a last resort because of the pressure they’re under,” he said. “They are not doing that; changing the words will not change the law.”

The legislation’s compatibility with human rights notes Labor’s changes were “clarifying provisions and are not intended to change the law”.

Mr Miles said current wording of the law was undermining public confidence and changes would “make it absolutely clear that community safety must be the priority for the courts”.

Construction on an 80-bed youth detention centre began at Woodford in February but will not be finished until late 2026.

A separate 40-bed centre at Cairns is expected to be completed by 2027 and a 50-bed “remand facility” is being fast-tracked at Wacol, west of Brisbane.