Detention plan ‘harsh’
A CAIRNS sports boss whose club was repeatedly targeted by young offenders is not sure whether mandatory detention is the answer to the city’s youth crime problems.
The Mulgrave Cricket Club at Edmonton has been broken into and vandalised many times over the past 18 months, with children as young as 11 or 12 charged with the offending.
The club’s president, Gavern Lovett, said the LNP’s youth crime plan, which includes mandatory detention after a youth’s third offence, might be too heavy-handed.
“We need to engage a lot more with our youths,” he said. “I don’t know all the answers, and continued reoffending is a problem, but I’m not sure locking them up is the solution. But, certainly, more needs to be done.”
The opposition’s proposed overhaul of the youth justice system involves around-theclock monitoring of youths on bail, and a “farm” stay for offenders to be taught skills and “self-discipline”.
Cairns’ Crime and Justice Action Group spokesman Aaron McLeod said while the tougher measures to tackle the problem were welcome, he believed there were gaps in both the LNP’s and Labor’s offerings, with parents needing to be more accountable.
“Both Labor and the LNP are extreme on the soft and hard policies in their respective strategies,” he said. “They lack balance, a non-partisan focus on prevention and closing the cultural gap in parenting, families and public administration neglect. Parental accountability and family responsibility are critical.
“We want to see more innovative policies for parents of serious offenders being charged as accessories to crime, and a consensual focus for a legal framework that provides incentives for parents and guardians to engage in rehabilitation and restoration programs, including employment or detention.”
Mulgrave MP Curtis Pitt said the LNP’s “three-strike” detention policy was “very simplistic”.
“If there was a simple solution to recidivist youth offenders, we would have found it,” he said. “There are clearly some young people who flout the law and they deserve to have the punishment that’s coming to them.
“I also know many young people go off the rails and deserve an opportunity to correct their course.”