The Queensland Government's Making Queensland Safer Bill 2024, introduced into the Parliament yesterday, is an alarming backwards step that ignores local and international human rights principles and will not work to make the community safer.
"This legislation rips up long-established sentencing principles relating to children," said Mr Greg Barns SC, national criminal justice spokesperson, Australian Lawyers Alliance.
"The Queensland Government says these laws will make the community safer. This is demonstrably untrue. In reality, treating children cruelly and putting detention first results in higher reoffending rates on release.
"It will particularly further entrench the horrific levels of disadvantage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people."
Under the proposed legislation, children can be sentenced to life behind bars for five offences, including manslaughter, grievous bodily harm and a form of robbery and burglary. The new laws mean children as young as 10 will be subject to the same maximum sentence as adults for 13 offences. If convicted of murder, children must be sentenced to life, with a minimum 20-year non-parole period.
"All the research, and we mean all the research, that has examined the impact of detention on children and youth tells us that reoffending rates are between 70 to 90 per cent. Furthermore, the risk of mental illness increases when children are in detention and educational progress is effectively stopped," says Tom Percy KC, spokesperson, Australian Lawyers Alliance.
"These laws are from the 19th century. They amount to state-sanctioned child abuse.
"This legislation will also cost taxpayers dearly. Locking a child up is significantly more expensive than community-based diversion prorgams. Then there is the cost to the community of increased crime, the need for an increase in mental health services, and the issue of young people emerging from detention not prepared for post-secondary education and the workforce."
The Australian Lawyers Alliance said the short consultation timeframe for the Bill is putting politics ahead of the needs of vulnerable children in Queensland.
"We are particularly concerned about the short consultation timeframe given that the Government intends to override Queensland's Human Rights Act 2019 in order to enact this Bill," said Mr Barns SC.
