The Queensland government has rejected claims it plans to revive the idea of military-style “bootcamps” for youth offenders through a program on a North Queensland cattle station.
The opposition seized on a planned visit by Townsville Labor MPs and justice department officials to Jervoise station on Thursday as evidence of a backflip after the Palaszczuk government scrapped bootcamps last October.
A spokesman for the attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, denied similarities between the Jervoise station’s “Youfla” program and bootcamps, which an independent review found had no impact on reoffending rates compared to youth detention centres.
The Youfla program, which counts Katter party crossbenchers as strong advocates, was akin to “a number of culturally appropriate, adventure-based learning programs such as Project Booyah that include time away from home for young people as part of a wider program”, the spokesman said.
Ian Walker, the opposition justice spokesman, told the Townsville Bulletin that government interest in the program was “an admission from Labor that its soft on crime approach is not the answer to curbing youth crime”.
The spokesman for D’Ath said the government had “no plans to revisit the misguided notion of bootcamps”.
“Bootcamps were a $16m blowout that did not achieve any outcomes for the individual youths or the broader community.”
The visit by MPs and officials follows an invitation at the Youth Justice Forum in Townsville in June, the spokesman said.
The former Newman Liberal National government set up five bootcamps from the Sunshine Coast to Cairns as part of a 2012 election promise to get tough on youth crime.
A Queensland Audit Office report last year found tenders for the camps were beset by cost blowouts, poor planning and lack of documentation.
A$5,500 donation to the LNP by one operator the week after winning a contract left the process “open to accusations of favouritism”, the auditor general found.
A report by KPMG found the cost of keeping a young offender in that camp was more than double that of youth detention. But the reoffending rates for all camp attendees at 63.5% were no different to detention, it found.
