Call to scrap youth prison

MORE children are locked up in Queensland than any other state or territory in the country, while the adult prison population has ballooned by 68 per cent over a decade, a damning new report reveals.

The report, released on Tuesday, found that the state’s youth prison population had grown by almost 30 per cent over the past seven years, and nine out of 10 young people in youth detention are unsentenced.

The report’s author, Justice Reform Initiative, is backed by a slew of high-profile Queenslanders – including former governor-general Quentin Bryce, former premier Mike Ahern and former judges Margaret McMurdo and Margaret White.

The organisation’s executive director, Dr Mindy Sotiri, said the findings were more evidence that the government needed to ditch its plan to build another youth detention centre.

“This is a shortsighted and counter-productive policy that will make it more likely that vulnerable children will commit further offences and become trapped in the revolving prison door that has become a devastating feature of Queensland’s justice system,” she said.

“Youth detention disconnects children from their communities and takes them away from the supports and connections that they need to build good lives.”

An adult in prison costs taxpayers $207 a day, or $75,602 a year, while a young person in prison costs $1880 a day, or $686,127 a year.

On average there are 266 young people in detention each day.

According to the report, State of Incarceration: Insights into Imprisonment in Queensland, the growth has not been driven up by an increase in serious offending but by policy choices.

Dr Sotiri said the “tough on crime” political rhetoric from both sides was about “vote winning” and not about keeping the community safe.

“We’ve been sold a myth – prison doesn’t work … often people come out worse than when they went in,” she said.

The $500m set aside for a new prison would be better spent investing in pre-charge diversion programs, post release programs and family support programs, Dr Sotiri said.

“That announcement (to build a fourth youth detention centre) has been made but there hasn’t even been a business case developed on whether or not there should be a new prison and I find that very worrying … it looks very much like a political announcement,” she said. Queensland’s rate of imprisonment is 236.6 people for every 100,000 adults.