Youth crime ‘number one’ issue in Queensland, Labor mayor warns

The Labor mayor of Townsville Jenny Hill says youth crime is the ‘number one’ issue facing Queensland and called on the state government to remove the requirement for detention to be a last resort in sentencing juvenile offenders.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Mayor Jenny Hill at the Townsville Quayside Terminal for announcement of a Hydrogen hub.

Townsville Labor Mayor Jenny Hill says youth crime is the “No.1” issue facing Queensland and urged the state government to remove the requirement for detention to be a last resort in sentencing juvenile offenders.

In Townsville, home to three Labor-held seats that could decide the October state election, youth crime is a growing political problem for the government, with recidivist youths stealing cars and breaking into homes.

Mayor since 2012, Ms Hill gave evidence to a powerful parliamentary committee on Monday and called for mandatory minimum 12-month sentences for car thieves and the removal of a sentencing provision that children should be detained as a last resort.

She also endorsed a Katter’s Australian Party plan to send repeat youth offenders out to the bush for long-term, intensive rehabilitation programs.

“The ability for youth offenders to complete a mandatory sentence in a setting where there are no distractions such as social media and mobile phones, as well as gaining important life and work skills in a rural setting, will genuinely rehabilitate them,” Ms Hill wrote in her submission. “(Completing) a trade while on country would help re-instil a sense of purpose in youth offenders and give them a way to reintegrate as functional members of society after their sentence has been served.”

Dumping detention as a last-resort provision, a policy championed by the Liberal National opposition, would “remove one avenue magistrates and judges use to avoid issuing sentences commensurate with public expectation”, Ms Hill said.

Premier Steven Miles said removing detention as a last resort would be “dangerous”, expensive, see thousands more young people locked up, and not work. “It’s really important that the laws that we have are informed by what our police and our courts advise us, and overwhelmingly, the expert advice, the evidence, suggests that the best way to keep the community safe is not to have sentencing as a first resort,” he said.

The latest Children’s Court of Queensland figures, published in December, revealed the number of charges finalised against child defendants last year grew 16 per cent on the previous year to 43,031. The number of hardcore recidivist children grew from 568 to 652 last year with 20 per cent of all young offenders considered “serious repeat offenders” under the official index.

More than half of all convicted children were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, despite Indigenous people representing just 4.6 per cent of the state’s population.

In a submission to the committee, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service chief Shane Duffy said “kneejerk tough-on-crime responses”, including the Labor government’s reintroduction of controversial breach-of-bail penalties last year, had pushed more children into prisons and police watch houses.