REVEALED: Toowoomba’s top suburbs for juvenile crime

Over the past five years, more than 6000 offences have been committed by children in the Garden City - here’s which suburbs fared the worst.

Here’s which suburbs topped the list for juvenile crime.

TOOWOOMBA CITY, Newtown and Harristown have been listed as the top suburbs for juvenile crime in figures released by the police minster.

Over the past five years, more than 6000 offences have been committed by children aged between 10 and 16 years old in the Garden City.

Of these, 1284 were recorded in Toowoomba City, making it the number-one suburb for juvenile crime. Many of these incidences were offences against property (705 cases).

Newtown and Harristown followed with 785 and 678 juvenile crimes respectively.

Mr Janetzki said the state government needed to provide more police resources to target offending.

“Car thieves wreaked havoc across the city during the Christmas school holiday period last year with 109 cars stolen between December and January,” Mr Janetzki said.

“These thieves are brazen – sneaking into homes through unlocked doors while families are home, cutting flyscreens and climbing through windows left open due to summer heat, even crawling through pet doors.

“It is a sad fact of life today that the community must take as many preventive measures as possible to make it harder for criminals.”

Harristown neighbourhood watch area co-ordinator Brian Jentz said their most recent crime report showed sneak breaks were regularly being committed in their area.

“Police tell us that offenders are regularly wandering around the streets, checking the doors of homes and cars until they find an unlocked one,” Mr Jentz said.

“We are reminding residents to be vigilant, lock homes, lock cars, hide keys and make observations of people looking into houses.”

However, youth justice minister Di Farmer said juvenile crime was already a high priority and had declined in the past two years.

“Community safety is at the heart of everything we do in youth justice, that’s why we committed more than half a billion dollars since February last year to reduce crime and reoffending,” Ms Farmer said.

“We are already seeing results – the figures show youth crime has steadily declined in Toowoomba since July 2017.

“For the financial year 2017 - 2018, 1602 offences were committed by young people in Toowoomba between the ages of 10-17, compared to 1501 for 2018 - 2019.”