Queensland has topped the country as the state with the highest rate of repeat offenders within 12 months, according to new data released on Jan. 24.
The report, from the Productivity Commission, comes as authorities grapple with a youth crime wave that has swept up Queensland and the central Australian town of Alice Springs.
According to the figures, 56.8 percent of Queenslanders aged 10 to 16 were re-sentenced for new offences within 12 months of being released from supervision in 2019-20.
This was followed by Victoria (56.3 percent), Northern Territory (54.8), Tasmania (49.2), Western Australia (49.1), New South Wales (44.4), and South Australia (41.2). New South Wales is the most populous state in the country.
While Queensland’s figure was the highest, it was lower compared to its 2017-18 number of 65.5 percent.
The state also recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention in 2021-22, the highest of all jurisdictions in the country, followed by New South Wales at 190.
Fatal Stabbings Mar State
The findings come as Queensland authorities face questions over their handling of juvenile offenders after the fatal stabbing of mother-of-two Emma Lowell in North Lakes, Brisbane.The 41-year-old Lovell, with her husband—both migrants from the United Kingdom—defended their home from two 17-year-olds who broke into their property at around 11.30 p.m. on Boxing Day (Dec. 26).
Lovell suffered stab wounds to her chest and later succumbed to her injuries. Her husband was treated at the hospital.
The two youths already had extensive criminal records.
Just last week, a 43-year-old man was fatally stabbed in the inner-city suburb of Wilston allegedly by a 17-year-old already known to police who wielded a 45-centimetre-long knife described as “almost a small machete.”
Authorities Face Questions Over Handling of Crime and Youth
The state premier is set to bring in tougher laws in response, including upping penalties for crimes committed at night, increasing the maximum penalty for stealing a car, and raising penalties for boasting about crime online.“They need to have programs ... to see that they will actually have work when they leave prison,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters.
“Some of these young people have complex backgrounds, and ... we need to help break that cycle of crime.”
Yet Labor’s governance of the state has come under harsh criticism, with former Premier Campbell Newman saying the criminal justice system was in “terminal decline.”
“For almost the entire period from 1989 to 2023, apart from five years of conservative governments, the Labor Party has created a system through the appointment of judges and magistrates that interpret the laws,” he told The Epoch Times.
“We have seen, over the last month-and-a-half, things that should have never happened. We should never have got to the point where people are going out with knives and feel they can use them,” he said.
He also said youths needed to be diverted into social programs citing his experiment with setting up “boot camps” for juvenile offenders in 2013.
At the time, youths spent around four weeks learning cooking, cleaning, physical activity, and studying under constant surveillance. The Newman government had set up five that year with plans for more.
Yet after the Labor government came to power in 2015, the camps were disbanded, with then-Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath branding them an “expensive failure.”
In response, Newman challenged the government to come up with its own new ideas on how to deal with youth offenders and delinquents while at the same time calling for the state’s Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll to step up.
“It’s time for her to do her job and actually protect the community rather than being distracted by accusations of misogyny and sexism in the Queensland Police Service,” he said.
Carroll has been forced to deal with the results of an inquiry alleging cultural problems within the police force.
