MPs critical of youth jail plan

Idea panned as ‘volatile’ and ‘unsafe’

A FORMER Townsville detention centre worker-turnedstate-MP believes building a youth jail in Cairns would be “extremely volatile and unsafe”, while another claims the Cleveland detention centre is costing taxpayers $1600 a day per child to operate.

The comments come after the premier revealed in Far North Queensland on Tuesday the state government was looking at building a youth detention centre in the region to address spiralling crime rates.

Phil Thompson, LNP member for Herbert, worked at the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville as a youth worker for three years.

He said the centre was tantamount to a holiday camp, and needed reforms to return it to being “an actual detention centre”.

“It is not a deterrence of bad behaviour, it has a pool, it has a basketball court, young people have said it’s a good place to be.”

Mr Thompson said the detention centre had not helped Townsville.

“We have seen an increase in Northern Australia, especially in Townsville with more violent crime occurring and it is because there is no punishment for the bad behaviour,” he said.

“It is extremely volatile and unsafe for the youth workers at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, there is countless amount of assaults that lead to no change and no extra charges.”

Mr Thompson said the centre could have dire effects on the Cairns community.

“If you put in a detention centre in Cairns that is run the same way as Cleveland Youth Detention Centre it will have a negative effect on the community and it will teach the belief to these young criminals that they can get away with everything,” he said.

“If there is a detention centre that is set up like Cleveland it will be set up to fail and set up to punish the youth workers and put people at risk in your community, it is not a risk I would like to see.”

Member for Hinchinbrook and Katter Australian Party deputy leader Nick Dametto said a phenomenal amount of money went into Cleveland.

“Cleveland costs around $1600 a day to keep a child there, that takes into account staffing requirement, running the facility,” he said.

Mr Dametto speculated on the locality of the next detention centre.

“The closer to a metropolitan area, the easier it is to staff the facility. In saying that, there’s no reason it couldn’t be somewhere else if there’s fly-in fly-out workforce,” he said.

“I’m sure government would need it to be close to town so it’s close to manage.

“If the state government is hell-bent on building a detention centre in the middle of Cairns, it would have to come with the expense of making sure of the safety of residents in the area.”

The Katter Party have put a solution forward to get the kids to a remote location to do a six to 12 month program.