Kid crims cut school for nights of terror
TOWNSVILLE students skipped the equivalent of more than 3500 days of school last year.
Department of Education and Training data revealed the scale of Townsville’s truancy issue, which many in law enforcement believe is fuelling the region’s youth crime problems.
Kirwan police officer in charge Senior Sergeant Jason Brosnan recently told the Townsville Bulletin many of his officers were finding young offenders at home asleep during school hours, before they launched into nights of crime.
The region’s student attendance rates at schools were hovering around 80 to 90 per cent in 2017, indicating it was a select group of students not showing up to school.
Despite the high attendance rates, 3559 days of unauthorised absences were recorded by students around the region in 2017. Townsville police district’s Acting Chief Superintendent Steve Munro said it was frustrating to see the same kids repeatedly caught up in the criminal justice system.
He said it was a societal issue more so than a policing issue and it would be a massive help if parents could take responsibility for their children.
He said it was no secret children who were absent from school were over- represented when it came to criminal offending.
Acting Chief Supt Munro said police weren’t the “solvers of all problems”; their priority was to protect life and property.
He said the Townsville Stronger Communities Action Group was working closely with educators to try and keep children engaged in education.
Hinchinbrook MP Nick Dametto, who is a member of the Queensland Parliament’s Education, Employment and Small Business Committee, said keeping kids in school was “pivotal to reducing crime”.
“I think there’s a clear correlation between school attendance and a reduction in youth crime,” Mr Dametto said.
He said it was a “moral responsibility” of parents to ensure their kids weren’t caught up in lives of crime.
“I find there’s usually two types of kids that aren’t going to school – those whose parents are on welfare and those whose parents are working but don’t have control of their children,” he said.
I THINK THERE’S A CLEAR CORRELATION BETWEEN SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND A REDUCTION IN YOUTH CRIME. NICK DAMETTO
“It’s very hard for the Government to enforce parenting standards on the latter … where the parents are working and not on welfare.
“But if you’ve got parents who are on welfare, it’s easier for the Government to penalise those who aren’t looking after their children properly because we can look at things like quarantining or reducing payments and putting them on a cashless welfare card.”
He said those approaches had garnered support from Palm Island mayor Alf Lacey and local indigenous leader Jenny Prior at a recent relocation sentencing forum.
At that forum, they also promoted their youth relocation sentencing policy which would remove repeat young offenders from communities and station them on a remote property for rehabilitation.
Mr Dametto said that would be a last resort.
“I believe a strong education system, coupled with good parenting, is the key to breaking the cycle of youth crime in North Queensland.”
Townsville- based psychologist Jutta Dempsey said most young people were committed to school and extra- curricular activities and it was only a minority of kids showing disrespect to others, including police and authority figures.
A state government spokesman said there were early intervention services provided by transition pathways officers to students from Year 10 to 12 in North Queensland.
A teacher was also employed for the Townsville Stronger Communities Action Group to transition kids from youth detention and keep others from falling through the gaps.
The spokesman said police could prosecute parents for not ensuring their kids attended school, but that would only be requested “after substantial effort has been made to engage with the parents regarding their child’s attendance”.
A 12- bed expansion of the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre was in progress, but the spokesman said placing kids in detention “almost guarantees” they would reoffend.
The spokesman confirmed there were no plans to increase police powers to detain youths on suspicion or increase the length of time they could hold them and introducing mandatory sentencing was not on the Government’s agenda.
The spokesman said there were no plans to open a rural rehabilitation centre “or any centre that takes young people away from their own communities”.