Will Australia lock up children for bail breach?

The Queensland police minister, Mark Ryan, revealed the government’s new youth bail policy during a community crime forum in Toowoomba last week. The procedure is an “intense supervision” program that involves police doing house inspections and patrols.
It was received poorly. Attendees harassed Ryan and made fun of him for saying that most people released on bond do not re-offend.

Five days later, Ryan entered the cabinet meeting of the Queensland government with a completely different strategy: he would overturn Labor’s own Human Rights Act and charge kids with crimes for violating their bail conditions. For violations, young people might spend up to two years in prison.

The suggestion, which the administration has derided for years, caught the majority of ministers off guard. Stirling Hinchliffe, the tourism minister, had just the day before claimed that “breach of bail is not something that has achieved any outcomes.”

To emphasize his point, Ryan brought slides to the cabinet. He argued to his colleagues, among other things, that a change in strategy would counter LNP attacks.

According to sources, government needed a lever to release pressure from media outlets and state opposition, which had become heavily focused on bail issues when discussing youth crime. The police minister made other arguments, including need to respond to community sentiment, but they claim that the political point was made bluntly.

The LNP’s strategy was summarized by a Labor source as follows: “Every news report about another occurrence would be accompanied by a paragraph from the LNP claiming the remedy was [for] breach of bail.

“Now we can look back and say, “Well, we accomplished what you wanted us to do,” if the LNP runs an election campaign focusing on juvenile crime.”

Regional and outer-suburban Labor MPs shared with their colleagues their growing concern about maintaining their seats amid widespread negative media coverage of a perceived teenage crime “crisis” at their first caucus meeting of the new year earlier this month at K’gari.

The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, had announced a 10-point plan in December that was intended to be presented to the parliament when it reconvened this past week. The project included heavier terms for some offences.

Internally, it became apparent that the administration was also looking for a circuit breaker—another step that may strengthen the response.

Australia is aware of a discussion about granting police the authority to arrest minors who violate their bail conditions rather than necessarily making those violations a crime.

Concerned about the effects of punitive actions two weeks ago, a few advocates heard a rumour about those early inside deliberations. Senior Labor sources categorically denied that such a move was being discussed when questioned.

The timing of the government’s decision to make child bail violations a crime is unknown.
In a statement on Friday, Ryan stated that the government had “considered” the action and had “been studying legislative frameworks that would achieve this goal before announcing this policy.”

But, only a few individuals, including senior ministers, were aware of the strategy before Monday, when Ryan presented it to the cabinet and Palaszczuk made it public.

One insider said, “You don’t show up with slides without the premier being behind it.”

Palaszczuk started the government’s systematic sell right after the cabinet meeting. It appears that she was attempting to link the opposition to the success—or failure—of the bail regulations when she claimed that the plan was created “in the spirit of bipartisanship.”
Palaszczuk claimed that the government was paying attention to “evidence” and the community.

Leanne Linard, the minister of juvenile justice, later told the media that Palaszczuk’s assertion regarding the evidence related to other juvenile justice programs, not the bail adjustments.

According to the premier, responding to a breach of bond required adopting a nonpartisan strategy and acting on a strong demand from the local community, said Linard.

Attorney General Shannon Fentiman stated to the state legislature on Tuesday that returning juvenile offenders to court would give the government another potential point of intervention to get them involved in programs and address the root causes of their offences.

This appeal by Labor ministers and MPs is undoubtedly complicated by prior claims that the concept of “breach of bail” for children was useless and would not work, accumulated over four years.

Some people feel aggrieved that they were called out for their remarks, alleging that the same media outlets who accused the administration of “backflipping” had vigorously pushed for the laws.

The government has also claimed that its prior comments were in reference to a previous violation of the bail policy of the Newman government, which was abandoned in 2015 when Labor took office and made it illegal to commit a crime while free on bail. They emphasize that the new legislation are now even stronger, among other things.

Ryan said that the LNP’s changes prevented a minor offender from being penalized for violating a bail undertaking’s condition