Crackdown sees kids in custody longer than their sentence

A youth crime crackdown has put more young people in custody for longer, according to Childrens Court president Deborah Richards.

Judge Richards said a “public outcry” after several high-profile crimes in early 2021 led the Queensland government to impose a crackdown, with new bail laws and electronic tracking of repeat offenders.

“It is unsurprising, in those circumstances, that the number of children held in custody (both on remand and serving a sentence) increased in 2021 to an average daily number of 233 children in custody on any given day,” Judge Richards wrote in the court’s annual report, tabled in Parliament.

“The average daily number of young people in custody on remand increased to 204 per day compared to 176 in the previous year.

“Unfortunately, this often means that by the time the majority of children who are on remand are sentenced they have already served their sentence or in some cases spent more time in custody than would otherwise have been ordered by the courts.”

Judge Richards pointed to research showing how many children in the criminal justice system came from “significantly deprived backgrounds”.

She expressed concern over the lack of government-funded mental health professionals to assess and support young offenders, and noted the shortage had delayed the resolution of the criminal charges against them.

Apart from more funding for mental health, Judge Richards called for Legal Aid to be extended to parents appearing in child protection matters who “are often unrepresented and struggle with addiction, mental health and domestic violence issues of their own”.

“The number of children who have been previously named in a child protection proceeding who have also appeared before the Childrens Court charged with criminal offences continues to be a matter of concern,” she wrote.

“As at 30 June 2021, a total of 264 children were subject to dual child protection orders and youth justice orders. These children usually have complex needs that are difficult to manage but are very much in need of protection. They are often in residential care facilities or bouncing from kinship carer to families of friends and they regularly abscond from their placements. Urgent work needs to be done to assist these children.”

Child defendants with a finalised appearance, by age, all courts in Queensland. Credit: Childrens Court of Queensland

The Labor government has resisted calls to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14. More than 400 of the court matters finalised in 2020-21 involved children aged under 14.

Judge Richards said boys represented 72 per cent of finalised appearances, there remained a significant over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and “once again, 10 per cent of juveniles have committed 46 per cent of the finalised charges in the youth justice system.