Crime doesn’t pay – unless you’re a recidivist youth offender living in Queensland.
The fatal Boxing Day stabbing of Emma Lovell, allegedly by two 17-year-old home invaders, spurred Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to announce a suite of youth justice reforms. Included among them is an increase in the maximum imprisonment penalty for stealing a car and a proposal to construct two new detention centres. There are also some stipulations increasing the severity of penalties for thefts of vehicles perpetrated at night or accompanied by actual or threatened violence.
Far from being a ‘tough on crime’ approach, these proposed changes – to be introduced in State Parliament this month – are a package of impotent measures that will fail Queenslanders as well as young offenders. While these measures appeal to public sentiment with their talk of harsher punishments and detention, the changes will not effectively target recidivism in the long term. Bolder reforms are needed to counteract the crisis gripping the state. Relocation sentencing, as proposed by Katter’s Australian Party, holds the long-term key to reducing crime as it recognises that poor environmental factors are a primary reason behind recidivism, and provides young offenders the chance to escape their troubled circumstances and acquire the necessary skills to live a new life.
It remains a question whether the courts would implement the increased sentences proposed by the reforms. Responding to such inquiries, the Queensland Premier brazenly commented that ‘the courts need to do their job.’ That’s quite the statement from the very premier whose government sets the parameters limiting the courts’ ability to ‘do their job.’ The Youth Justice Act – which could be amended at any time with Palaszczuk’s majority – requires that courts can only consider detention as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time. Increasing maximum penalties means very little when courts can rarely impose even the minimum on juvenile offenders.
And even if courts could more readily impose a detention sentence, would re-offending decrease? In 2019-20, more than half of youths sentenced to detention or probation presented before courts within 12 months of their release. And from 2020–21, 95 per cent of youths detained at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre were alleged to have committed another offence within a year following their release. As Dr. Mindy Sotiri from the Justice Reform Initiative states, ‘The experience of imprisonment makes it more likely that someone will commit more crime.’ To quote a 2019 Griffith University study, detention encourages recidivism by ‘entrenching offender identities and social networks’.
And detention is not cheap. Each imprisoned child costs more than $686,000 per year. 266 children, on average, are in detention every day, leaving Queenslanders paying over $180 million each year. That’s quite the price to pay only to have youth offenders simply repeat their senseless, violent behaviour upon their release.
We must address the root causes of recidivism, rather than the consequences of criminal behaviour as Palaszczuk’s reforms attempt to do. Relocation sentencing is that solution.
Under this proposal, courts would be empowered to send repeat young offenders to a remote, isolated facility in far North Queensland. They would work the land, engaging with an incentive system based on points and awards as they aim towards achieving a qualification – such as a windmill technician, builder, stockman, or fencer. In the process, they would gain life skills and the sense of accomplishment and purpose unavailable either in their private lives or in detention.
It is a proposal that addresses a key finding from the data: that you are a product of your environment. Adverse childhood experiences – such as trauma, abuse, and neglect – are directly associated with recidivist offending. A census conducted by the Youth Justice Department in 2020 revealed that 60 per cent of juvenile offenders had experienced family violence. By removing young offenders from the very environment responsible for their criminality and offering them a real chance of rehabilitation and contribution to community, relocation sentencing represents a circuit-breaker – all while maintaining community safety.
Opponents may argue that while the trades-like skills they learn are valuable in a rural, property setting, they aren’t sought after in the city. With potentially limited job opportunities, what’s to stop juveniles from falling back into their old habits once returning to their home environment, as often happens post-detention?
Relocation sentencing would establish the individual as a member of the working class – a community-member identity – rather than the ‘offender identity’ associated with detention that leads to recidivism. Armed with an education and life lessons that can only come from meaningful work in a real-life setting, these youths could gain the courage to overcome their home environments, leaving their old life behind in pursuit of a law-abiding one.
With a policy platform riddled with tried and failed measures, it is incumbent on the Palaszczuk government to trial a promising strategy that goes beyond the confines of a detention facility. To curb the crime crisis facing Queenslanders, now is the time for bold action.
Edmund Stephen is a Contributor for Young Voices, and a Law Graduate from the Queensland University of Technology.
