Youth bail homes ‘ fail’

THE State Government has been accused of “abandoning” its youth bail house policy as it’s revealed there is a “critical incident” at a Townsville facility every week.

There have been 41 critical incidents, which can include breaching curfew or fighting with staff, in Queensland’s four Supervised Community Ac- commodation facilities since December. Of these, 35 occurred in Townsville’s two youth bail houses.

Youth Minister Di Farmer told an estimates hearing the rollout of five more facilities had been pushed into future budgets but denied this was a sign the Government had “changed its mind” about the policy.

“In terms of priorities, we considered that ( the existing houses) were going to be the ones that we really wanted to focus on,” she said.

Ms Farmer also revealed five of the 33 young people who have spent some time in a bail house had been charged with new offences.

Director General of the Child Safety, Youth and Women department Michael Hogan told the hearing a “critical incident” at a bail house could include a range of behaviours.

“It may involve noncompliance with the structured activities … it might involve confrontation with staff or between residents,” he said.

“It may involve not coming back on time.”

Mr Hogan said breaching curfew was a house rule and not a condition of bail so incidents were not reported to the Queensland Police Service.

“None of the young people who have been living in ( bail houses) have been returned to court for breaching bail conditions,” he said.

When asked if bail house residents were required to participate in any formal education programs, Mr Hogan said staff organised activities to get the young people “back on a pathway to school”.

“Most of these young peo- ple are disengaged from education,” he said.

“They have often had lengthy periods of time never being at school and not participating in alternative education arrangements.”

Ms Farmer said the purpose of the bail house model was to “actively engage” young offenders and “keep them occupied” so they did not reoffend.

But LNP justice spokesman David Janetzki said the decision to push back the rollout of five new houses was proof the policy wasn’t working.

“They’re walking away from the youth strategy,” he said.

“There are major problems, if it’s not working that’s an issue frankly because Labor have thrown millions of dollars into this plan and there are serious questions hanging over whether it will work.”

Mr Janetzki said the Government had to “do better”.

“The Minister ( Di Farmer) always talks about evidencebased policy making but if the evidence doesn’t stack up, what’s the Government going to do,” he said. “We need to focus on things that work.” bail house