The Queensland government will begin charging children with criminal offences for breaching bail conditions – a move that advocates say will cause a human rights emergency in the state’s buckling youth detention system.
Labor had previously repeatedly ruled out reintroducing breach of bail as a criminal offence, arguing it would not be effective. Senior government sources had told Guardian Australia as recently as last week that such a move would not occur.
But after calls from the LNP opposition and some anti-crime campaigners, the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, on Monday told reporters the government had “listened to the community” and would introduce a new offence in the youth justice act.
“We want to work together in the spirit of bipartisanship, in the best interest of the people of this state,” she said.
The impact of the reform is that it gives police an arrest trigger for bailed young offenders on the streets. Current police powers only allow police to arrest juveniles if they are committing, or suspected of committing, an offence.
But community workers and advocates say some children on bail are on the streets because it is safer than being at home or elsewhere.
The likely increased arrests of young people will also heighten severe human rights concerns in police watch houses. Existing government policies making it harder for children to receive bail have caused the population of young prisoners – mostly First Nations children – to swell.
Youth detention centres are full and about 80 children are currently being held in adult watch houses, some for more than four weeks.
Debbie Kilroy, the CEO of Sisters Inside, said Labor had become “worse than the LNP”.
“This is disgusting. This is going to explode the numbers in watch houses, it’s going to explode the numbers in youth prisons, all to justify their policy decision to build two new youth prisons,” Kilroy said.
“With the LNP you know what you get. Labor pretends they are values based, they are for marginalised disadvantaged people, for the battlers.”
Katherine Hayes, from the Youth Advocacy Centre, said the new laws would do “nothing to reduce youth crime” but would instead entrench criminal behaviour in young offenders.
“The detention centres are already beyond safe operating capacity so there is nowhere for these young people to go.
“The courts currently impose quite prescriptive conditions on young people designed to address the causes of their offending, such as curfews, having to attend to substance abuse issues, engage with counsellors and other such measures.
“These measures are quite easily breached, and to avoid making such a breach a criminal offence, there is likely to be reluctance in the courts to apply such conditions, resulting in the root causes going unaddressed, which continues the cycle of reoffending. The community is no safer.”
The attorney general, Shannon Fentiman, last June ruled out reinstating breach of bail as a criminal offence for children, saying it would not reduce crime.
“It was not a disincentive,” Fentiman said. “It did not stop young people reoffending.”
Youth justice minister Leanne Linard also ruled out reinstating breach of bail as a crime last year. She said most youth offenders who breach bail conditions are put in detention anyway.
“We don’t want something that didn’t work, that the court themselves couldn’t use, because it was essentially charging them twice for the same offence,” she told ABC Radio.
Under intense grilling by reporters, Palaszczuk denied that re-introducing breach of bail as an offence was a “populist decision” and did not answer questions about whether the measure had been backed by experts.
Terry O’Gorman, from the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, pointed out this week that magistrates already have the power to refuse bail and repeatedly do so.
Palaszczuk said the legislation is targeted to a small segment of repeat offenders and would be part of the government’s 10-point plan to address youth crime.
Other measures to be introduced by the government include a maximum of 10 years for car theft, a maximum 14-year penalty for violent offences or crimes committed at night and increased penalties for criminals who boast about their offences on social media.
Prof Tamara Walsh, from the University of Queensland’s School of Law, said 80% of children in detention in Queensland are on remand – warning that legislating breach of bail as an offence could unfairly punish innocent and disadvantaged kids.
“What that’s going to mean is that for kids who miss an appointment, suddenly they’ve committed an offence,” Walsh told Guardian Australia last year.
