Queensland's New Youth Crime Laws May Spark UN Investigation
Monday 10 February 2014 @ 10.11 a.m. | Crime
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services in Queensland and the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) have written letters to the United Nations asking for an investigation into Queensland’s new proposed youth crime laws. The new laws may result in juvenile offenders’ names being published, detention would no longer be seen as a last resort and some juveniles may be moved to adult jails.
The Queensland Attorney General, Mr Jarrod Bleijie, has announced that the government’s new laws will see:
- repeat youth offenders having their names published;
- the principle that detention should be a last resort will be removed;
- juvenile criminal histories will be made available in adult courts; and
- when a teenager in detention turns 17 and still has six months or more left of their sentence they will be moved to an adult jail.
The letter to the UN mentioned earlier will emphasise the fact that these laws will be particularly harsh on indigenous children. The letter claims that while indigenous children only represent 6% of children aged between 10 and 16, they represent 60% of all young people in detention in Queensland.
Queensland Law Society’s (QLS) deputy chair has also voiced his concern over the naming of young offenders and the removal of the last resort aspect of the law. QLS is opposed to the taking away of judicial discretion as it would ultimately be a heavier burden on the justice system. It is argued that this would only increase the chances that young people would reoffend.
“I think you’ll see young people being alienated from their community. They’ll be stigmatised. It erodes, obviously, the child’s right to privacy but more significantly it creates unwanted attention that could make it difficult for the child to find employment...They’re often known in the community and it deters potential employers from employing them because of an unfortunate opportunistic crime a child may have committed at the early stage of their development.”
Concerns over young offenders being raped by adult prisoners were also raised but were dismissed by the Mr Bleijie who stated that rape did not happen in jail. He described jails as not being nice places but there are adequate staff to ensure those sort of things did not happen.
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