The cost of incarcerating a child in Queensland has risen to more than $2,000 a day, a figure described in a new report as “an incredible investment in a system that’s failing”.
The report by the Justice Reform Initiative – a coalition of judges, experts and former politicians – said the overreliance on incarceration in Queensland was harmful, expensive and failed to make the community safer.
Queensland has locked up the highest number of children nationally since 2020 – and has more than three times as many incarcerated children than Victoria – the report said.
It said recent data from the Productivity Commission showed the annual operating cost of imprisoning a child was $2,068.32 a day and $761,507 each year.
The Queensland government has announced the construction of two new youth detention centres – one in Cairns and another in south-east Queensland.
In February, the government also passed controversial youth justice laws that overrode the state’s Human Rights Act to make breach of bail an offence for children.
In under two months since the laws came into effect, Queensland police have handed down 300 breach of bail charges to children.
The executive director of the Justice Reform Initiative, Dr Mindy Sotiri, said “imprisonment not only fails to reduce crime but does so at extraordinary expense and harm to the community”.
“This longstanding approach to justice has resulted in dramatically increasing prison populations, skyrocketing costs for Queensland taxpayers and thousands of people cycling through a prison system that fails to rehabilitate, deter reoffending, or prioritise community safety in the long term,” she said.
Late intervention in Australia has been estimated to cost $2.7bn in youth crime, according to the report.
In contrast, early intervention and prevention programs reduce crime at a population level by between 5% and 31%, and reduce offending among at-risk populations by 50%, it said.
Bail support programs were shown to slash reoffending by 33% and increase compliance with bail conditions by 95%, while First Nations place-based approaches also resulted in significant reductions in crime, the report said.
Daniel Brookes, a client service manager at the Youth and Family Service (YFS) in Logan, said one of its programs – Resolve – aimed to divert young people, 10 to 16 years of age, away from the justice system.
Brookes said he had met a 13-year-old boy who had come to the attention of police and had been sleeping rough after falling out with his mother and father.
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“As a 13-year-old sleeping in the streets … a lot of the time [you don’t have] positive mentors,” Brookes said.
“You end up in situations where you are getting in stolen vehicles. You’re just surviving. You’re not in a position where you’re able to thrive.”
After completing programs at YFS, the teenager is back at home with his father and going to school.
“He had taken up an interest in music. So we’ve connected with a positive community where he had some goals and some dreams. And that young man’s future is back on track,” Brookes said.
Brookes said children need to be supported to participate in the community in a positive way.
“There’s a lot of media attention on repeat offenders but there are a whole group of young people that are teetering on the edge of becoming involved with the criminal justice system,” he said.
“And if we’re not there, supporting and diverting them away from the system, they will become repeat offenders.”
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