The National Children's Commissioner has called on leaders on all sides of politics to admit they don't fully comprehend the youth justice issue in Queensland. The call comes after the Australian Human Rights Commission criticised policies to address youth crime promoted in the lead up to the Queensland election, calling it 'a race to the bottom'. Commissioner Anne Hollonds says politicians need to acknowledge the evidence, which shows locking up children does not keep communities safer.
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00:00I think this is not a party political thing.
00:04I think that we see in some jurisdictions where youth crime is seen to be a bit of a
00:11political football, that everyone tries to sound tougher than the other side.
00:17And that sort of plays well, I guess, politically.
00:21But I think what we need to do, and I'd encourage the public to be asking the question, where
00:26is the evidence that any of these ideas are going to work to keep the community safer?
00:31What I'm calling for is for our leaders on all sides to have the courage to say all the
00:38evidence shows we've got it wrong.
00:41We've approached the problem of youth crime by tinkering at the justice end, but no more
00:46policing and more incarceration of children.
00:50All of that will not work to keep the community safer.
00:54That's what we've shown here in Australia and it's been shown internationally.
00:58What we need to do is to focus on the underlying drivers of this kind of negative behaviour
01:04and address things like the poverty, the homelessness, the disadvantage, the disabilities that the
01:10majority of these children have, often leading to their disengagement from school.
01:15And if a child's not at school, where are they?
01:18They're likely to be on the streets and to be getting involved in negative behaviours.
01:24I've spoken to 150 of these children for this project, for a report that's being tabled
01:31in Parliament next month, and they were in prisons or in the community, and you can see
01:37that they are kids who are missing the basic needs in life.
01:42And so, in a way, the crime—you can understand the crime better as a cry for help to address
01:48the basic needs of children.
01:49So we have collectively failed them and we need to collectively work together, I believe,
01:55as a federation to prevent these problems occurring.