Queensland police may have violated police manual rules when they handcuffed a child during a roadside arrest, shown in a 30-minute documentary video produced by the service.
The documentary, Policing Youth Offenders, released yesterday by the Queensland Police Service (QPS), is described as a "real and raw" insight into the challenge of youth crime in the state, but shows more than 20 images of children in handcuffs.
In one scene, during a roadside arrest, a young woman willingly gets out of what appears to be a stolen vehicle and is immediately handcuffed on the side of the road, later telling the arresting officer, "I just have really bad anxiety".
He responds, "That's OK, you're doing the right thing by behaving yourself".
At a press conference, Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll could not precisely recall the rules governing the use of handcuffs on children.
"Certainly not to the letter of the law," she responded, adding "but certainly it has to be reasonable."
The rules around handcuffing children
The state's Police Operational Procedures Manual, May 2023 — which includes a foreword by Commissioner Carroll — states "an officer is not to handcuff a child unless the child … cannot be controlled by other means".
Youth Advocacy Centre chief officer Katherine Hayes said the police action shown in the footage may be unlawful.
"The police arguably did not have the power to handcuff that young girl because she appears to have been fully complying with their oral instructions and there was no risk of her running away, from what the video footage shows," Ms Hayes said.
"One of our clients is a 13-year-old boy who has been on the streets for about six months, a young Aboriginal boy, very small and underweight.
"He was asleep under the Grey Street bridge, and police kneed him in the back to wake him up and put him in handcuffs straightaway.
So there was no clear indication that he wasn't complying with their instructions."
'Police get things done' says Commissioner
The film — produced by the QPS media unit over 10 months at an unknown cost — pivots from highlighting a tough-on-crime approach, to arresting young offenders, to emphasising the role of police in preventing crime and addressing social issues.
It shows police officers chairing multi-agency collaborative panels, which brings together representatives of other government agencies, like health and education, to focus on the broader needs of individual children and address the root causes of crime.
"The reason why we chair collaborative panels, and work with other agencies, is that we know that we [police] get things done", Commissioner Carroll said.
Critics speak out
But Associate Professor Peter Malouf, an Indigenous academic from James Cook University, said it shouldn't be the police chairing the panels.
"The problem here is that police have come up with their own solutions about how to tackle the problem, well, hello, let's get back to community justice," he said.
"It shouldn't be led by the police.
"It should be led by community to support young people in vulnerable times of their lives, going in, sitting them down and being that role model, diverting them away from the justice system.
"We've seen this escalation of [the rate of] young offenders, and we know that police have developed these solutions, but they are doing it single-handedly without actually working with the community."
Dr Malouf — who viewed the half-hour film, which is hosted on the QPS social media pages — is also concerned the documentary stereotypes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, rather than emphasising that children of all backgrounds contribute to the youth crime statistics.
Ms Hayes, who attended the official launch of the documentary at a Brisbane cinema at the invitation of the ABC, also had concerns about the message from the film that police have a greater willingness to use discretion rather than just charge children in the first instance.
"Our workers do not have a perception of police trying to divert young people from the youth justice system, and don't have a sense of police prioritising diversion or rehabilitation," she said.
"There still seems to be a punitive approach by police on the streets."
Dr Malouf echoed Ms Hayes' concerns.
"Look I'm not seeing that here in Townsville either," he said.
"What we're seeing here is that police are not using discretionary means to divert [children] from the watch house into detention.
"I think there needs to be a review of practices of the police around when and where they should use their discretion."
Funding of the documentary questioned
Broader questions have also been raised about why the film was produced in the first place.
"Why are police funded to make videos about their failure?" asked Debbie Kilroy, who advocates for women and girls in prison through Sisters Inside.
"We as a community must hold police accountable and not fall victim to their marketing.
"Police are not victims, they are overly funded to do a job they admit they can't do, 'end youth crime'."
But Commissioner Carroll said that the force now has the right approach to dealing with youth crime, and needs to stick with the strategy.
"We can't give up. We've got to sustain this over a period of time to change generations into the future," she said.
The film concludes with Gibson, a former youth offender, commending the police approach to youth crime.
"Now my dream is becoming a police officer and helping other younger kids actually respect the law and see what they're actually about," he said.
