Queensland police data shows youth crime at near-record lows. So why the ‘tough on crime’ election talk?
New data released by the Queensland Police Service shows youth crime rates in the state have fallen to near-record lows.
With a state election looming and the unofficial campaign in full swing, the Queensland “youth crime crisis” or “epidemic” has become a totemic issue. Labor and the Liberal National party continue to push “tough” and “tougher” plans to address community concern.
The government says police statistics – showing a reduction in youth offences last financial year – are proof that its police-led policies, including high-arrest saturation operations, are working.
Experts, however, warn that crime suppression operations will only ever have a temporary effect and that any reduction in crime is simply “kicking the can down the road” – until after the election.
What are the major political parties saying?
The Labor government has twice suspended the state’s Human Rights Act to implement more punitive policies, as it reacts to public concern about youth crime.
Most recently, it removed the international law principle of “detention as a last resort” from the Youth Justice Act. It claims its policies are the “toughest in the nation”.
The LNP opposition announced last month that it would introduce an “adult time for adult crime” policy that would remove sentencing concessions for children convicted of a range of serious offences.
Challenging the notion there is a “youth crime crisis” has proved borderline scandalous. Last year a Labor backbencher, Don Brown, described youth crime as a “media beat up” in a Facebook post. He was quickly forced to backtrack.
What does the data (and the experts) say?
The data suggests that youth crime has consistently decreased in Queensland over the past two decades.
The Queensland Government Statistician’s Office (QGSO) shows that the rate of “unique” child offenders has consistently decreased and reached its lowest-ever level in 2021-22, during the Covid pandemic.
The rate increased “slightly” in 2022-23 (by 2.7%) and was described in media reports as an “alarming spike in youth crime”.
According to the Queensland Police Service, the rate of child offenders dropped by 2% in 2023-24. Since 2012-13, rates have decreased by 18%
The QPS said offence numbers dropped by a greater amount (6.7%) last financial year.
The former president of the children’s court, John Robertson, has said statistics “completely refute” the notion of a major youth crime wave.
Has there been an increase in serious crime?
At the same time, while offender numbers are down, there have been concerns about a small cohort of young people dubbed “serious repeat offenders”, who are the ones most-often targeted by police operations and government policies.
When the government suspended the Human Rights Act to introduce a new criminal offence for children breaching technical bail conditions, it justified the move by saying that 17% of youth offenders commit almost half of the offences. This amounted to, it claimed, an “exceptional crisis situation”.
QGSO data shows that as the rate of youth offenders has decreased, those who do come before the courts are, on average, facing more charges.
The most recent police data shows that while youth offences have dropped across the state, “offences against the person” have increased.
William Wood, a criminologist at Griffith University, says “the long-term trends certainly don’t show a youth crime epidemic”.
“It’s more accurate to say that during and immediately following Covid there were regional increases, in some cases substantial increases, in certain offences … and offender types.
“There’s a uniform understanding that compared to 10 or 20 years ago crime rates are far lower. In most western industrial nations, they really peaked in the 90s for youth crime and they’ve continued to decrease overall since then.”
Why is the community on edge?
Much of the community concern about crime has followed very serious incidents, including fatal car accidents, home invasions and alleged murders. Those high-profile incidents have often galvanised community concern and prompted government policy shifts to “meet community expectations”.
Experts have also warned that the growing prevalence of anti-crime Facebook groups can amplify the scope and seriousness of crime within a community and fuel calls for more extreme responses.
Victims of crime groups say statistics mean little to those living with the effects of the offending.
“You can throw whatever statistics you want out there, but when you are a victim and someone kicks down your door, what difference does the crime rate make?” a Townsville resident, Jenny*, said before the 2020 election.
“What does a number mean to me when I’m having to buy new locks again? Everyone knows someone who has been a victim. No one I know will support that [the idea that the crime crisis is exaggerated].”
How is the government responding?
Queensland has more children in custody than ever before. The state already locks up more children than anywhere else in Australia and has been promoting arrest numbers from police “saturation” operations such as taskforce Guardian.
The large numbers of children in the system have create serious problems in the detention system. Detention centres are overcrowded and last year Guardian Australia reported on the extensive use of “separation” – another word for solitary confinement – in youth detention.
Where places are not available in detention centres, children are kept for indefinite periods – sometimes weeks at a time – in police watch houses.
The Queensland Family and Child Commission says children in the detention system almost invariably reoffend. A recent report found that up to 96% of children leaving detention reoffended within 12 months of release.
Is the recent drop in offences proof that this works?
The police and the state government have claimed declining youth offending rates are evidence that their strategies – including operations such as taskforce Guardian – are working.
Experts and advocates warn that the results will only be temporary, and that problems will emerge in the long term.
The chief executive of the Youth Advocacy Centre, Katherine Hayes, says that the approach simply hides issues and risks making them worse in the long term – by keeping more children in custody in the lead-up to a state election.
“The youth crime figures [might] do go down momentarily, but that’s just shifting the problem into the watch house and not preventing it from recurring,” she says.
Wood says suppression tactics work only “in the short term”.
“Any time you flood areas with police officers … you do get a crime suppressing effect,” he said.
“The thing that we know [is] you cannot arrest or incarcerate your way out of a youth crime problem. The US tried this for 20 years, it was an abysmal failure, you’re just kicking the can down the road.
“If you wanted to write a playbook about how to turn younger kids [into offenders] this is it.”
How will this affect the election?
Concern about youth crime is nothing new. Last year, ABC Brisbane combed through old newspaper reports and showed that the same tropes – “spoilt children, irresponsible parents, and lenient judges” – have been blamed for youth crime since the late 1800s.
The issue was a factor at the 2020 election, particularly in Townsville, where Labor held on to marginal seats despite last-minute promises by the LNP to introduce a youth curfew.
This time, the opposition leader, David Crisafulli, appears to have managed to cut through. He is well ahead in the polls and frequently spends time in regional Queensland, platforming victims of youth crime.
Polling shows the LNP well ahead of Labor with less than three months until election day.
