Debunking the debunk, the facts about crime in Queensland

Over the weekend the ABC released a online story claiming to debunk the Queensland youth crime crisis.

The article can be accessed online here.

ABC News article claiming to debunk the Queensland crime crisis.

It centered around the below main themes.

So let's address the claims of the article one by one.

1. The claim crime has not risen in Queensland.

This claim is made in the article:

"But crime in general has fallen, with Queensland Police Service data showing falling crime rates in almost all categories of crime."

The Queensland Police Service (QPS) Mypolice website provides public data on crime rates. It shows that the Queensland crime rate has in fact been rising since 2021. In fact the Queensland crime rate in 2023 was the highest it has been for 20 years. The picture tells the story.

The latest Queensland Crime report for 2022-23 showed that:

"Queensland police recorded 596,702 offences in 2022–23, an increase of 13.5% (+71,050 offences) on the previous financial year. The recorded offence rate, at 11,088.8 offences per 100,000 persons, increased 11.2% compared with 2021–22. While property offences showed the greatest increase in terms of volume (+42,056 offences), the increase in percentage terms was almost identical for personal (+17.7%) and property (+17.1%) offences."

The below figure shows the crime rates for various offence categories.

The latest available public data shows that crime across Queensland rose by 0.1 percent in the last twelve months. As newly appointed QPS Commissioner, Steve Gollschewski, said recently “And whilst you might think ‘oh that’s good it’s stabilised’, it’s not good,” he said. “I’m not satisfied at all because we’re on a really high level”.

2. The claim that there is not a Youth Crime crisis

The article stated:

"Youth crime rates have plummeted in Queensland despite claims from both major parties that the state is in the grip of a youth crime crisis."

The 2022-23 Queensland Crime Report stated the below in relation to rising youth offending.

"In 2022–23, the number of non-unique offenders aged 10–17 years proceeded against by police increased to 57,410, representing an increase of 8.6% (+4,564) from 2021–22."

2021-22 the Queensland Crime Report showed a 13.7% increase in the number of children aged ten to 17 being proceeded against by police, compared to the previous year. The total number of youth offenders reached 52,742, the highest number in ten years.

In relation to youth offenders numbers plummeting the crime reports shows the below:

The article went onto rely on ABS data to substantiate the claim that youth crime is falling across the board. In most of the states and territories, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the youth offending rates have trended downward over the past decade.

The ABS data shows that in 2022-23 the youth offender rate rose in every state except for the Northern Territory.

There however devil in the detail. It should be noted the ABS youth offender rate only counts how many unique offenders came into contact with police – each offender is only counted once, regardless of how many times they may have offended in the period. This means it does not provide an indication of overall recidivism rates by individual young people.

The ABS also note that youth offenders were alleged offenders aged between 10 and 17 years proceeded against by police during the reference period. It does note however that term was used to refer to offenders aged between 10 and 19 years in publications prior to the 2015–16 data release. These 18-19 year olds would have substantial effect on raising the offending rate as can be seen by their offending activity in the latest Queensland Crime Report.

Even though only 18% of all offenders in Queensland were under the age of 18, these youth offenders accounted for more than 50% of all break and enter, robbery and stolen vehicle offenders during the year.

In Victoria, crime statistics show that from 2021-22 to 2022-23, there was a 24% increase in the rate of incidents committed by youth offenders under the age of 17, per 100,000 of population.

Likewise, data from New South Wales shows from 2021 to 2022, the rate of young people being proceeded against by police increased by 7%, per 100,000 of population. The rate of those proceeding to court for more serious offences increased by 11% for the same period.

The seeds for the current crime crisis in Queensland were sowed by the Labor government in 2016 when they removed breach of bail as an offence for youth offenders and also reintroduced the principle of detention as a last resort back into the Youth Justice Act.

Little wonder that Queensland is in the grip of a youth crime crisis of its own making. In the latest Queensland crime report, youth offenders accounted for more than 50 percent of our robberies, break and enters and stolen vehicles.

The Atkinson review of the governments youth justice reforms released in 2022 showed that offending by young people on bail had increased.

Some 53 percent of young people on bail reoffended whilst on bail, 19 percent committed serious offending and seven percent committed an offence leading to death or serious injury whilst on bail.

?In 2023 the Labor scrambled to reintroduce the breach of bail for youth offenders. Since then, the true extent of the problem has been revealed. In the 12 months up to May this year 1144 young people were charged with 8464 breach of bail offences.

? No wonder youth offenders operated with impunity.

3. DV is not the single cause of the crime increases.

The article made this claim:

"Queensland passed new laws which meant violence against a partner was classified both as an assault as well as domestic violence."

The Queensland Parliament passed laws in 2015 which allow a court to record the convictions of domestic violence offences. Previously, a person’s criminal history did not state whether an offence was committed in domestic circumstances.

The amendments did not create any new offences, it merely allowed current offences to be categorized as DV related.

This is particularly relevant if the person is convicted of an offence that would not normally be considered a domestic violence offence, for example, assault. If the offender is convicted of a?contravening a domestic violence order, they will face a higher penalty if they have been convicted of a domestic violence offence within the last five years.

As the MyPolice data shows, all offence categories, offences against the person, offences against property and other offences have been increasing.

Clearly all crimes are contributing to the increase in the Queensland crime rate.

4. We are putting all our kids in jail

There is a national push to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years. Currently in Australia, the Commonwealth and most states set the minimum age of criminal responsibility at ten.

This push is being led by a campaign called Raise the Age. It has a slick website makes emotional appeals such as “right across Australia, children as young as 10 are arrested, charged with an offence, hauled before courts and locked away in prison cells”. It has downloadable information packs, links to email politicians directly and a messaging guide.

The messaging guide includes such suggestions as don’t use youth, say child, use wording that puts the blame on politicians, so they feel pressured. Ironically victims of crime hardly rate a mention on the website.

That this misleading messaging has been effective is evidenced by the responses of governments around Australia.

The Tasmanian, ACT and Victorian governments have all committed to raising the age to 14 years. The ACT by 2025, Victoria by 2027 and Tasmania by 2029.

In the Northern Territory the Labor government raised the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years in 2023, this was on the back of a youth crime epidemic in the territory. ?That government was wiped out this month, and the newly elected CLP government has vowed to roll this back.

The lesson here for Queensland should be poignant, crime, in particular youth crime, is a big election issue. Treat it with disdain at your peril.

Yet the 2023 Queensland Labor State platform states that:

“Labor will increase the age of criminal responsibility from 10 years old to 14 years old"

This is despite former Queensland Labor Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman correctly observing: “Simply changing the criminal law does not reflect the complexity underlying youth offending and why children as young as ten years old commit these offences.”

So, are we locking all our kids up? The answer is no.

The Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council looked at offences committed by youth offenders aged under 14 years for the period 2005-2022.? Out of 17,694 cases only 2.1 percent received a custodial sentence, with the average period of detention being 5 months.

The most common court outcomes for youth offenders under 14 years were reprimands 27.4 percent, probation orders 23.1 percent and court diversions 15.4 percent. On average 17 youth offenders aged under 14 years received a custodial sentence in Queensland each year in Queensland.

As the report noted:

“children under 14 were rarely sentenced to detention”.

In Victoria data provides startling evidence of how few of these youth offenders go to jail. Between 2017-2023 there were 6541 offenders aged 10-13 years, only 20 offenders, less than one percent received a custodial sentence.

In New South Wales in 2023 police proceeded against 2144 youth offenders aged 10-13 years, of those only 10 received a custodial sentence. Five of these custodial penalties were for three months or less, three were between three and six months and two were over six months but less than one year.

What this data shows is that we are clearly not locking up our kids, nor are we throwing away the keys on the rare occasion when we do sentence a youth offender to detention.

The next issue is do children aged between 10 and 13 understand the difference from between right and wrong.

Operating in conjunction with the age limit is the “doli incapax” presumption, which is available in all states and territories. This means a child aged 10-13 years isn’t criminally responsible for any offence, unless it can be shown the child had the capacity to know they ought not to commit the offence. This places the onus of proof on the prosecution.

Certainly, by the age of 10 years this sense of reasoning would be developed in most children. At school we educate our young people about the dangers of tobacco, drugs and healthy relationships etc. Yet some would argue we should not hold a child over the age of 10 years responsible for breaking into your house?

The Raise the Age proponents argue that because a child may not realise the consequences of their actions, they should not be held accountable. Understanding the consequences of your actions is a separate issue to knowing if what you did was right or wrong. How do we teach young people responsibility for actions and consequences if we do not hold them accountable?

How we, as a society, punish those young people who transgress is also a separate issue. If we don’t want any youth offenders in detention, we can do that without raising the age of criminal responsibility, one is not dependent on the other.

We must ensure that we do not weaken our criminal justice system in a way that will ultimately fail our young people by creating a generation with no sense of personal responsibility that can only weaken our social fabric.

The dismissal of imprisonment as a useful sentencing option is not as clear cut as you might as you think a research paper by the Australian Productivity Commission in 2021 noted:

“The literature has consistently found that incapacitation through incarceration leads to significant reductions in crime."

Indeed imprisonment run well can achieve more than is often realised.

And it is not necessarily the case the non-prison alternatives are that more successful. Data from the Queensland government shows that 61% of youth offenders who underwent a court diversion process between 2022-2023 re-offended within 12 months.

The LNP have brought forward the issue of reset camps, which have been largely dismissed as being a replication of the Newman era boot camps. The research evidence tells us that boot camps are ineffective in stopping recidivism.

But these camps are a different concept to boot camps, which are court ordered alternatives to incarceration. These camps would be voluntary and before a problematic youth enters the criminal justice system with the focus on education, discipline, counselling, training and employment. These are relevant given that 48 percent of youth offenders are disengaged from education, training and employment. They might just work.

The other big LNP policy is adult crime and adult time.

Between 2005-16, some ten youth offenders were convicted of murder in Queensland. Only six got life sentences, the rest received sentences between 8-14 years. The LNP policy will mean life for youth offenders who commit murder. It will make little difference to other offences as only about six percent of youth offenders in Queensland receive custodial sentences and hardly any receive the maximum sentence.

A crisis is a matter of perception

A sense of crisis is created to some degree by not only rising crime rates, but also a sense of helplessness felt by the community and a perceived failing of the government to provide for a safe and secure community.

How the public perceives crime issues is just as important as the reality of crime trends themselves. The Commonwealth Report on Government Services provides a snapshot of perceptions of safety. In 2022-23, 87% of people felt safe at home at night, while just 33% felt safe on public transport and 53.7% on the street.

It is what is happening now that is important to the community. Telling people it was worse 20 years ago does not reassure the community. Victims of crime have a right to be heard and this election will be an opportunity for them to send a message to our politicians.