Townsville’s bail house kids run wild

CHILDREN living in Townsville’s controversial bail houses have broken curfew at nearly three times the rate of their counterparts in the southeast, new figures have revealed.

It comes as an independent review of the State Government’s Supervised Community Accommodation program revealed it was costing taxpayers $2600 a day to house one teenager in a bail house.

New figures obtained in a Question on Notice show there were a total of 474 “critical incidents” recorded across Queensland’s four bail houses in the 2018-19 financial year; two in Townsville, one in Logan and one in Carbrook.

Of those incidents, 90 per cent were bail or house curfew breaches.

Children at Townsville’s two bail houses committed 317 curfew breaches, significantly more than the children in Logan (47) and Carbrook (62). A total of 24 young people were charged with new offences while living in the bail house, eight of them in Townsville.

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington seized on the data, criticising the State Government’s “bail house experiment” as a “spectacular failure”.

“Labor’s bail houses are costing taxpayers millions and simply don’t work,” she said.

“I will shut down every single last bail house that have caused so much misery across the Townsville community.”

Ms Frecklington’s comments come amid revelations, contained within an interim report into the bail houses, that it costs taxpayers $2600 a day to house one young person in a bail house, five times more than the cost of a luxury hotel room.

The report, obtained via the ABC through right to information, also found too few children had taken part in the scheme to make it financially worthwhile as there had been fewer than 60 participants in the first 18 months.

Youth Minister Di Farmer this week defended the cost of bail houses, saying the figures shown to the public don’t include any assessment of “avoided costs” like taking a child through the court system.

“In New York, the program took two years to mature, with a number of changes made over the period to get the model right,” she said.

“The cost of reoffending to the community is also very high. Many victims of youth crime would say too high.

“But if we can reduce reoffending by offering appropriately supervised alternatives, we can reduce the cost to the community.”