NUMBERS PAINT POOR PICTURE OF CITY CRIME

With a state election just one week away the city’s crime crisis again dominated the election campaign. This week LNP leader Deb Frecklington hit the issue hard, while campaigning in Townsville, releasing a youth curfew plan for our city and Cairns.

The plan would see teens aged under 17 not allowed in the street after 10pm and teens under 15 expected to be home by 8pm.

The move is no doubt draconian and has been criticised by many in the community and from afar.

That said, many others, mums and dads in the suburbs, think it is a good thing.

And who could blame them.

Today Townsville Bulletin crime reporter Shayla Bulloch crunched the numbers on Townsville crime.

She went searching to see if crime was really the issue many in the community said it was.

She gathered police data for the past 12 months and compared the same data with another seven major centres on the coast of Queensland.

Shayla broke the numbers down to crimes per 1000 people, to compare the issue on a per capita basis, instead of going by raw data on cities with larger or smaller populations.

Unfortunately the numbers don’t paint a good picture for our region.

Townsville led the pack on home break-ins and drug offences.

It then came a very close second for stolen cars to Logan and a close second in assaults to Cairns.

To put the figures in another context, 60 homes and 17 cars are getting broken into and 73 people are being charged with drug crime in Townsville each week.

This is the reason crime is an issue for people in the suburbs and why many people are living in fear. It’s also the reason many Townsville residents are prepared for the region to take the drastic step of a curfew.

But as police Superintendent Craig Hanlon explains the issue is much more complex than just locking kids up.

He said social issues in the community kept them on the wrong track.

It’s why a curfew won’t work in isolation. Much more needs to be done on the root cause of why our children are resorting to crime.