Plan to send juvenile offenders out bush, put them to work
THE ancient Aboriginal punishment of banishment is being resurrected by a Queensland political party which believes it might once again prove effective in dealing with juvenile crime.
Katter’s Australian Party, putting juvenile crime front and centre of its campaign for the looming state election, yesterday fleshed out its ambitious “relocation sentencing” policy, which would build a youth reform centre in one of Queensland’s most remote locations.
KAP Queensland leader Rob Katter and party leader Bob Katter have their eye on a balance of power outcome after the October state election that could see the KAP presenting a laundry list of demands to whichever party needs help to form government.
At the top of that list will be the state-funded facility in the Lake Julius Reserve region about an hour’s drive north of Mount Isa where troubled teens would be sent, much in the manner misbehaving Aborigines were temporarily banished from their tribe and sent into the wilderness.
Rob Katter, the member for the Mount Isa-based seat of Traeger, said no mainstream party had shown any willingness to tackle a problem of ever-growing concern in cities such as Townsville.
“North Queensland simply cannot afford not to do this,” he said.
Bob Katter said the cost of keeping a juvenile in Townsville’s Cleveland
Detention Centre
$500,000 a year.
“We will do this for about $56,000 a year for each resident,” he said. now exceeded
“And under this proposal each kid helps build their own accommodation, helps grow their own vegetables, learns how to lay bricks ...
“They will emerge from here with the skills to get a job, not find themselves in juvenile detention learning how to be criminals.”
The KAP candidate for the Townsville seat of Thuringowa, Julianne Wood, formed the group Take Back Townsville, which collected more than 5500 signatures in less than six months.
She said the entire northern region was sick and tired of the lack of action on dealing with juvenile crime.
“Just in the month until July 23 we had 50 cars stolen in 115 break and enters in the Townsville region,’’ she said.
Townsville’s high car theft rate came to national attention earlier this year when a horrific accident left four children, all under age 17, dead.
Ms Wood said there was only one real issue in Townsville, which had three state seats.
“And that is: ‘ What is going to be done about juvenile crime?” she said.
“I think we have one answer with our relocation policy.’’