WHY WE’RE NOT GETTING ANYWHERE ON CRIME

IT’S like a game of Ring a Ring o’ Roses only it’s not fun and it’s at the expense of children and victims of crime. Trying to get meaningful answers out of the state police, child safety and youth justice departments can be difficult. Privacy laws, bureaucracy and political games are the biggest threats to this region finding a solution to our juvenile crime problem.

Victims of crime and those working at the coalface are cynical of the state government’s moves to fix our shocking youth crime epidemic.

Why? Because more and more cars are being stolen every week.

Tellingly, the Far North’s top cop, Acting Chief Superintendent Chris Hodgman, has admitted police struggled last week with the sheer volume of car thefts. This problem is big.

Police have pressed close to 3000 charges this year; close to 350 juveniles and 210 adults have been put into custody. A whopping 162 vehicles were stolen just in March. A special taskforce, which tweaked bail laws and introduced ankle bracelets for bad crims, which can’t even be rolled out in the Far North, is kicking into a new phase of “panels”. In a positive move, it will now also focus on crime-weary Mareeba. However, anti-crime campaigner Joanne Borg says there will be no improvement until there is an acknowledgment of culture when dealing with offenders’ families.

I spoke with one of March’s stolen car victims. Crims broke into her family’s inner-suburban house to steal the keys to their two cars. Apart from suffering the trauma of knowing someone had broken into their home, they took on the task of physically tracking down both cars themselves out of frustration. They’re still hopeful arrests will be made after handing over CCTV footage they found and gave to police.

Police are stretched, government departments are working in silos, victims are isolated and the kids are all but lost.