DO THE CRIME, YOU’LL DO TIME
Premier’s crackdown on youth crime: ‘We’ve heard you, Gold Coast’
PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk is vowing to finally get tough on young thugs after growing anger from Gold Coasters. She promises sweeping changes to tackle the city’s ‘kindergarten crooks’.
PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk has listened to the anger of Gold Coasters fed up with the city’s youth crime epidemic, vowing to finally get tough on young thugs.
The State Government will today announce sweeping changes in a multimilliondollar statewide crackdown on ‘kindergarten crooks’.
A five-point plan signed off by the Government yesterday will include:
● Tougher action on bail which would see offenders who are considered a risk to the community remain locked up.
● A police blitz on bail, appealing court decisions where appropriate.
● A 24/7 police strike team involving youth justice workers for high-risk offenders.
● Culture-based rehabilitation for indigenous offenders in Townsville, Cairns and Mount Isa.
● $2 million to be spent on community-based organisations for “local communitybased solutions”.
Ms Palaszczuk said the crackdown came after growing concern from the Gold Coast community and lobbying from MPs.
“We acknowledge that local communities and their families have concerns about youth crime,” she said.
“Where there is crime there must be punishment. Criminals – especially young ones – should fear the law. It has to be crystal clear to everybody community safety comes first.”
The Bulletin understands some legislative changes to the Youth Justice Act will be required.
The crackdown has been
developed in recent weeks in conjunction with senior police, including Commissioner Katarina Carroll, the Government said. Some of the measures will come into effect “as soon as possible”.
The Gold Coast Bulletin has campaigned for tougher penalties for young offenders who have brazenly terrorised the city in the past year.
The Palaszczuk Government has been under pressure to act after a spate of luxury car thefts, home break-ins, the bashing of bus drivers and innocent people on public transport, assaults on passengers for designer clothing and mobile phones, and the stabbing deaths of teenagers.
More than 3100 Bulletin readers responded to an online poll last month asking if the problem was out of control. Almost 2900, or 92 per cent, said yes. Thousands of angry readers have commented on the Bulletin’s Facebook page backing calls for change.
Frontline cops said they were sick of arresting young criminals, only for them to skip out the back of court and reoffend. A police union rep feared there would come a time when they stopped arresting youths, because “if there are no consequences for these kids, how can we expect the offending to stop?”
The Bulletin last month revealed the case of a 12-yearold boy who held up a convenience store. He was too short to see over a court dock. Within a month of walking from court, he allegedly stole and crashed a BMW at speed into two other vehicles. A woman driver was taken to hospital.
Police Minister Mark Ryan last night said the Government’s new measures would roll out immediately.
“We will go hardcore on the hard-nut offenders and will ensure these offenders are held to account and the community is safe,” he said.
“The Government’s intention has always been clear and that is community safety must come first and that’s the message we are reinforcing.”
Youth Justice Minister Di Farmer last month told the Bulletin just 10 per cent of offenders committed almost half of youth crime and that the funding was being spent to “break the cycle”.
“The community expects young people to be accountable for their actions, and so do we – but they also don’t want to see them reoffend.
“If we keep doing the same thing we have been doing, year after year, we can’t expect different results.
“We know if we keep locking young people up and throw away the key, they’re almost guaranteed to reoffend.”
WHERE THERE IS CRIME, THERE MUST BE PUNISHMENT. CRIMINALS – ESPECIALLY YOUNG ONES – SHOULD FEAR THE LAW ANNASTACIA PALASZCZUK
SOMETHING had to be done.
The 12 months of 2019 contained so many shocking acts and incidents committed by juveniles it may as well have been dubbed the Year of the Youth Criminal.
It showed no sign of abating with the first two months of 2020 peppered with more of the same.
Just this weekend gone, a Burleigh couple were attacked by a trio of youths while they innocently tried to depart a convenience store on Saturday night after they stopped in for water. Early last week, a mother protested the release of a man on bail after an alleged bashing of her son, 12, by a father and his teen son in Southport.
They are just the latest skirmishes in a citywide battlefield of youth-related crimes that have spanned teens beating teens for designer clothes and goods, public transport hub violence by freeloading youth perpetrated against other youths, staff and users as well as random fatal stabbings.
In a telling recent case that seemed to sum up the crisis, a judge had to ask a 12year-old — nabbed for an alleged armed robbery and standing before him in the court dock – to step out from it because he was so short he could not be seen.
The regularity of shocking incidents involving “Kindergarten Crooks”, as the Bulletin dubbed them, has become so frequent it has almost started to seem routine.
Except it is not and should not be treated as such.
The Bulletin has demanded it be addressed – and finally Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has seen fit to try and act.
In response to the community uproar and at the urging of fellow politicians, her Government is promising to commit to an action plan to tackle teen thugs – cracking down on bail releases, boosting police capability for intervention and aiding communities who are suffering.
The proof of the pudding will, as always, be in the follow-through and commitment to delivering its action plan. Legislative change is almost certain to be required.
But the plan finally puts perpetrators on notice that the rampage cannot continue.