Children as young as ten who have committed crimes will face the same penalties as adults if found guilty, as the state of Queensland in Australia passes a new law to clamp down on youth crime.
The government said the tough move is a response to ‘community outrage over crimes being perpetrated by young offenders’, and believes the measure will act as a deterrent.
After the bill was passed Thursday, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said: ‘These laws are for every Queenslander who has ever felt unsafe and been a victim of youth crime across our state’.
Labelled by the government as ‘adult crime, adult time’ the new laws lists 13 offences which will now be dependent on harsher prison sentences when committed by minors.
This includes mandatory life detention for murder with no parole for 20 years.
The maximum penalty for youths who had committed murder was previously 10 years, and life imprisonment was only considered if the crime was ‘particularly heinous’.
It comes after the Liberal National Party – which won Queensland state elections in October – made the regulations a focal point of its campaign.
Leading up to the vote, politicians had claimed that Queensland was suffering from a youth crime wave and a harsh approach was necessary to combat the issue.
The state of Queensland has introduced new laws that will see children as young as 10 face adult prison sentences as it aims to bring youth crime rates down
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli hailed the passing of the bill
The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed earlier this year 289,657 Queenslanders had been the victims of crime in 2023 with more assaults and home break-ins than any other state.
An increase in assaults, sexual assaults, kidnappings, robberies, blackmail, break-ins and thefts saw the total number of victims jump 13 per cent compared to the year before.
Meanwhile a report by the state’s auditor general found 55 per cent of all youth crime in the state from 2022-23 had been committed by ‘serious repeat offenders’.
It also reported the average daily number of serious repeat offenders had jumped by 64 per cent from 278 in 2018-19 to 457 in 2022-23.
But experts have criticised the move, claiming that tougher penalties do not reduce the number of crimes being committed by youths.
The United Nations meanwhile has slammed Queensland’s laws, calling them a ‘flagrant disregard’ for the rights of children.
Before the bill was passed, Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed in a video posted to X on Saturday that: ‘We do not agree that the so-called “exceptional circumstances” warrant what will be a flagrant disregard for children’s rights under the international law.
‘We also don’t agree that it will make Queensland safer.
‘We urge the government of Queensland to stand firm with the principle that children should be treated differently from adults in the criminal justice system.
‘We also urge them not to depart from the longstanding and universally accepted principle that deprivation of liberty for child offenders must be a measure of last resort and for the shorter appropriate period of time’.
Despite Queensland’s tough stance on youths, according to data from the Queensland Police Service and the Australian Institute of Criminology show that crimes committed by young people have declined.
The Australian bureau of statistics had also said that youth crime rates have halved in their last 14 years in the state of Queensland.
