Damien Atkinson, KC, a barrister and Youth Advocacy Centre chair, says no Queenslander should be a victim of crime, but harsher penalties also won’t solve the situation.
“If you just respond by being tougher on crime you fill the detention centres but when those young people are eventually let out, they’ll just be angrier than when they went in,” he said.
Does anyone have the stats to back up one way or the other as to whether youth crime has increased or not?
Locking what are essentially children up in detention constantly isn’t the answer, but at the same time I’m getting a bit sick of people’s shit getting stolen and there appearing to be no consequences for the offender. No real idea on age, but they look young in security camera footage that gets posted. Younger than me anyway. Get off my lawn, etc etc.
There is no age breakup in the search-able stats here: https://mypolice.qld.gov.au/queensland-crime-statistics/
If you download this report: https://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/issues/7856/crime-report-qld-2021-22.pdf
On page 70 of the pdf (section 6.5.2) it shows a large drop in youth offences than a decade ago
From the report: “There were 10,620 unique child offenders in 2021–22, a 20.5% decrease from 13,352 in 2012–13. The rate of unique child offenders also continued its steady decline to 1,926.4 per 100,000 persons aged 10–17 years, the lowest level recorded over the time series”
So, no the rate of youth crime has dropped dramatically.