The Queensland Law Society is alarmed by the provisions of the Making Queensland Safer Bill tabled in Parliament last week.
The new laws, which will require the courts to sentence all children as adults from age 10 for certain crimes, are a radical departure from longstanding legal precedent.
Queensland’s legal system has never worked this way. There are few jurisdictions in the world with such a system.
There are good reasons for this.
First, children are not adults.
A 10-year-old, or a 13-year-old, or a 15-year-old, does not have an adult’s capacity for decision-making, impulse control, or considering long-term consequences.
The prospect of life imprisonment for a child is to deprive a young developing person of any chance of rehabilitation and becoming a contributing member of society. It is also useless as a deterrent.
Second, prison can harden and institutionalise children.
The children in this target group are not going to somehow be ‘scared straight’ by tough custodial sentences.
Experience and statistical evidence shows the opposite. Longer and adult sentencing for children has been shown to increase recidivism, not reduce it.
There are times when harsher sentences are appropriate, but this is a subtle and difficult decision that needs to be based on the specifics of a case.
“If simply locking up children and young people made the community safer Queensland would have one of the lowest youth crime rates in the country. Queensland already detains more young people than any other state in Australia,” President Rebecca Fogerty said.
“While detention is needed in serious cases, leadership is required to address the root causes, including neglect, trauma, substance use, education, domestic violence and housing insecurity. The answer does not lie in removing a child’s human rights and hoping high maximum penalties will just ‘fix’ the problem. These changes will not make the community safer, and in fact will work to undermine the rehabilitative processes which are already in place.”
President Fogerty strongly condemned that the Bill is being rushed through Parliament on dubious grounds of an ‘emergency’.
"Because Queensland lacks a senate or upper house, it is particularly important to go through the usual process of discussion and debate regarding new legislation, especially for matters that the recent election demonstrated are so important to the Queensland community.
Such debate is particularly crucial for legislation like this, which is contentious, violates local and international human rights instruments, and which unanimous expert opinion agrees will worsen the problem it seeks to solve."
There are fewer young offenders than there were five years ago, and the most recent statistics show that the youth crime rate is decreasing.
It is risible to suggest that this represents a crisis so urgent as to trump the usual process of scrutiny for new laws.