 Stand by, stand by, I'm local, yes, I'm out of here. Do you have anything on, do you need anything? Have you taken anything at all, you under the influence? No sir, I just haven't prepared anxiety. That's okay, you're doing the right thing by by yourself, okay? I didn't really want to get in the car, I'll have no choice. Yeah, we've always got choices, there's no future in doing shit like this. Here we go. Down the barrel of the youth. Farrelling out of control. The young people have come more streets now. Do you see an escalation in that behaviour? Allegedly healed by teenagers. It breaks your heart. It's also frustrating. It's frustrating to the community. It's frustrating for us. Why are these kids out on the street? Providing the media for these young people today and no deriders. Get out of here, you'll be arrested. Why are they speeding? There's no one really. Stealing cars. They've also got devastated families. You have to know the history of why. The battle is far from over. You're often born into a country revolving door. That's hard man, that's hard shit to deal with. Young people don't end up offending at that high end overnight. You can't just keep arresting children. I've used the expression you won't arrest your way out of this. Now don't mean that we won't arrest children, we do. But on the other end of that, you actually have to start the work on the root causes of crime. Get on the ground. I've been in the police now for a long time and I've seen a change in probably the confidence of some young people out on the street committing offences. The young people have become more street smart than a number of years ago. The majority of offences revolve around burglary of homes to steal a motor vehicle. Not so much breaking into steel household items. And then the offenders are using that motor vehicle to joyride or go and commit other offences. The kids that we've got getting around in these style ones are, you know, 13, 12. As little as 10. It is varied. We have male and female. Demographics in terms of their family, they'll come from split homes. They might have both parents still within the home. They might be younger siblings of other previous offenders as well. But I would say that it'd be First Nations kids that are overrepresented in those that are engaged in committing crimes. If you're stealing a motor vehicle, regardless of your race and you are breaking into homes, committing criminal offending, you will be dealt with the same way as any other child. It can be about influences. It can be about mental health. It can be about drug usage. It can be many, many different things. You're under arrest for unlawful use of a motor vehicle. There's probably two cohorts of youth offenders out there. One is the 90% category of young people. So that 90% cohort of young offenders aren't so much committing the unlawful use and break-in type offences, but they're more disengaged from particularly education at a young age, disengaged from services and probably disengaged from family, which then brings them out onto the street, which then they start to congregate with the wrong cohort of people. They're doing minor to medium offending. Papal, not papal. Not papal. And that kind of is some of those early signs. They're reported missing. We see them coming to police's attention in terms of missing children reports. Then that starts to lead into some offending behaviour, and then the trajectory can get worse from there. And then there's the 10% serious repeat. Offender cohort who are in and out of our attention centres commit approximately 46% of all youth crime, and they're committing serious offences, burglary, unlawful use, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, arson of motor vehicle, that type of offending, so on the more serious scale. The serious repeat offender cohort are less than 400. I think what you see now is you see an escalation in that behaviour. You see more powerful motor vehicles, and you see social media and the mainstream media playing a role in elevating that and also providing the medium for these young people to gain notoriety, which actually drives some of our issue. No silly business, mate, or we're going to have a real bad night. You understand me? I would say from the GDs, they're very frustrated. You know, they're out there chasing these stylons or, you know, going from breaking it at break nano and doing the paperwork, putting the young person before the court. That's that 10% serious repeat offender cohort and that revolving door of getting arrested, going into detention, being released, getting arrested again, going into detention, being released. There's three youth detention centres in Queensland. There's two in the southeast corner here at Wake Hole and one in Townsville. There's a combined built capacity of 306 beds across the state, and this morning, for instance, there's about 282 young people in custody. A heavily structured environment in detention, a young person typically is woken at about 7.30 in the morning. They're in an accommodation unit with about 8 to 10 of their peers, with a staff member for every four young people. Day will start in terms of them undertaking chores, cleaning their room, undertaking hygiene, personal hygiene. Then they'll sit down and have a communal breakfast in that accommodation unit, so they'll attend school. So it's a heavily structured timetable based on the individual needs of the young person, but they'll go to classes, up to five classes throughout the day. There's quite a few children who do come out of there and they do change, but with the right support, the right transitional programs, they can change. There is a perception that young people come into detention and we've heard the phrase that it's a holiday camp. I challenge anyone who's worked in these environments or visited one to understand what holiday camp blocks you in your room for 13 hours a day and tells you what you can and can't do it every minute of the day. Young people respond to structure and routine in these environments because, sadly, they don't get that in their lives to date. While they're getting attended to in these institutions, nothing's happening in the home to change the home situation. So a lot of the families that we deal with are those intergenerational families known to the justice system, very much struggling to get out of the usual rut in terms of criminal behaviours. If they don't get that and they don't get the parental support and the right people in those transitional programs, then it becomes a revolving door. We do have some young people who their life circumstance is that poor that they find this a safer environment and that's the sad reality. Circumstances such as domestic violence, alcohol abuse, physical abuse, poverty, incarceration. Some of those young people live on the street. So in terms of coming to detention, they're fed, they've got a room and they're surrounded by people who are not going to harm them, essentially. If they think in jail is a better place than their home, there's obviously issues in the home that we need to fix. That is not the majority. That's the exception. We do have some young people who through negative peer associations, poor networks, family breakdown, they find themselves in situations where they've made mistakes. Across all young people in Queensland from 2012 to 2022, there are almost 80,000 more young people in that age group. Amongst that, there is a reduction of almost 4,000 unique young people coming into the youth justice system. That's quite a remarkable downturn, to be honest, over 10 years. And it tells me that things are working in the system over the lifespan to keep children out of the system and reduce that behaviour. Did you think about the people you were stealing from? Nope. Didn't have a clue. Didn't really care. And now, I actually do want to go back to them people and tell them how sorry I am. But that's the only thing I learnt, because that's the only thing we could do is steal from the shops and from people and all that. Well, there's no one reason. There's a number of reasons why children are out committing crime. And I think you have to know the history of why, what is their lifestyle like, what's happening in their homes that they're not in their homes. 0 to 18 is a very, very strong time of our brain development. Specifically, 0 to 3 is very much tuned for our brain to grab attention from our carers. Trauma impacts the way the brain's architecture is formed and that's now been shown through neuro-imaging studies. I didn't know my father or even see my mother until I was five years old. Parents should be involved with every stage of their children's lives, from birth through to adulthood. A lot of kids that we're dealing with, mum or dads in jail, they're living with grandma. Grandma's a bit too old to be chasing them around and stuff like that. So trauma is something you're often born into without even realizing it. Depending on the amount, which you could call adverse childhood experience, or the ACE score, mostly the people we're putting in jail have ACE scores that we're not even be able to calculate because they're outside the score of 10. So Andrew and Fletti established one between zero and 10, but that was based off educated people that managed to go to college and had a healthcare plan. The way it impacts that part of the brain is to affect the physical connections. So you need strong physical connections to be able to make short-term decisions. Me and my three other siblings walked the streets. My little sister was still a baby. I was probably two, had no food, no nothing. We went from door to door, couch to couch, to all that. The majority of children who are committing these crimes come from poverty-stricken homes. It was always raining, freezing as hell, no shoes, ripped up clothes, and we always used to steal from the shops. Baby formula, food for us, clothes, whatever we could. It's all about the poverty-stricken homes, overcrowding in homes and what little food is there, they've got to share. I don't have a problem sharing, but if there's not much there to share, and then of course it just gets bigger and bigger. They start off stealing food and then it gets worse. We look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They need a roof over their head. They need food in their bellies. They need to know right from wrong. My upbringing was different to others. So lived in North Queensland for two years, got beaten up by my grandparents. That kid has had a tragic background, a really tragic background. Very violent. It's frustrating to not just be able to pick up the family, shake all the problems out and put them down and go, okay, now we've got these supports and you're good now. You're all good. But when you're dealing with that generational trauma, that's hard, man. That's hard shit to deal with. If you look inside a brain that's been traumatised and they have a scan of the top part of the brain, they just don't have the same level of blood flow and oxygen to that part of the brain, implying that those physical connections have been disrupted architecturally somewhat. And sometimes they're not even formed necessarily in the same way. So that's what we mean by how you inherit your brain architecture over many generations that then subsequently sets you up for the rest of your life in a way. And so that's why I like to say we're not born a blank slate and it's the genetic lottery because you don't know where you're going to be born, do you? You have to have strong parents in the homes and if you know the history of the colonisation of this country, the men were taken away with the first contact. So there goes the head of the house. You have history that says marriages have to be approved. So you have homes that have loveless marriages. We've had stolen generation. So a lot of our families are still going through that intergenerational trauma. This little group were actually they're really tough to deal with at the moment and their cramming has gotten so regular. One of the crews who was dealing with them said they counted 60 cans of deodorant that were confiscated or in the area where they were sitting. When they're high, they are high-risk activity. They have got no clue what they're doing. We'll have them laying in the middle of the road like this road here. So if you're born to addicted parents, the chances of you becoming addicted are 60% greater than someone that wasn't. So you can already have more susceptibility to developing addiction as a way to medicate stress. So the brain's predisposed in a way already in utero. Around two-thirds of all young people that come into contact with the adjusted system have some sort of experience with illicit drug use. Sadly, a lot of that involves the use of methamphetamine, which is a very, very difficult drug for young people to come down off, but also for them to develop, you know, ways and means of ending that dependency. Addiction is simply medication for trauma. So if we don't address the cause, then we'll always have addiction. And with addiction comes all of the thing that comes with addiction, which is crime. Half of the kids have come through a way worse situation than me. And they just feel like that stealing something and meeting up with people, like their friends maybe, they just feel like they're actually having some fun and getting to do stuff in life. Instead of getting smacked or whipped or anything. And I think in terms of people seeking crowds that we would call criminal, is more like love. Because that's where they get connection. And they'll do whatever it takes to stay in that club or in that part of that group. I think it's also a status thing with these kids. When we have unfortunately had deaths, these kids, their mindset for some reason is my brother just died in that stolen. So what I'm going to do now is steal another seven in his honour. I don't understand that mindset. But it's like a status thing. They get the buzz of managing to do it and having control over something. But who gives them the reward for doing it? They get media attention maybe, but they also have people they're doing it for. Whether it's their little group of boys or whether it's a bigger bikey gang or whether it's whatever it is, people need connection. And then getting into Cleveland becomes a status thing. And then in Cleveland, there's a status thing as well. I've seen a lot of kids out there getting drunk, doing and shooting up and all that. I've seen a lot of kids in my childhood die. I've seen a lot of them end up in juvie. I've even seen family members kill themselves before they went to jail. And that's why I think it's so sad is because they don't... They feel inside, deep down. I know they all feel that they have no one to talk to and no one to communicate and see how they feel. The staff are very well-versed in working with young people that come from traumatic backgrounds and have experienced childhood trauma. Often these young people will say to us it's the first time that they've engaged with an adult in their life who hasn't tried to harm them, be that physically, mentally, sexually. So that's really important to us. The challenge for us is not all young people are receptive to that change. The average age of a young person in the youth justice system and indeed in the youth attention centre is about 16. So we're talking about 16 years of conditioning and development that doesn't turn around quickly overnight. These young people have very complex needs, often very multi-faceted needs. It doesn't excuse the behaviour, but it certainly paints the picture of the why. And it's important to understand the why if we're going to make a difference. Since inception, the task force work has been incredible, I think, on what it was meant to deliver. And we're starting to see some benefit on that. So a lot of the work that we're looking at now is building on that. Firstly, we need to ensure that safety is a priority and obviously we need to listen to the voice of victims but we also need to listen to the voice of youth that come into the criminal justice system that we actually hone in on not just the offending but what's happening in that particular person's life. Where have they been? What family supports do they have? What interactions have we had with them to try and looking at turning that around? What we've also looked at and we are doing around the state is trying to get pro-social help to that young person and to the family to try and prevent that cycle of re-offending. So trying to base our policing response and our government response on the four pillars which is early intervention, keeping children out of court, keeping children out of custody and reducing re-offending with the two bookends of that of increasing public safety and keeping community confidence at a high level. As opposed to just simply looking at the punitive component and charging and putting them before the court, we now consider holistically and it's more around prevention, it's more around intervention. Engagement with them, support services, wrapping a whole system around them with the endeavour of obviously minimising their future offending and recidivism that all go with that. So some of the work of the task force has also been to introduce what we're calling multi-agency collaborative panels. Multi-agency panels consist of a number of government agency representatives. QPS, youth justice, education Queensland, Queensland Health and child safety. First, young person for discussion is... Our main aim is focusing on 10 to 15 year olds must have case management either with child safety or youth justice and also have one proven offence. Did she say that she's hanging back out? Yes. Yeah. Mum has some drunk history. So that's concerning too, because previously they were engaging in a lot of chroming behaviours together as well. So once we can all share our information then we can collaboratively go, okay, so from a QPS perspective here's what I can bring, here's what our team can bring. From a YJ perspective, the case worker might be focusing on some preventative programs for them. We've got a youth correspondent team that I can have positive engagements with families and the young person as well. Did I say that Navigate Your Hope referral was completed? Yes, it's done. Yeah. Has she been accepted or is she on a wait list? What has happened since then because of the successes that some of those districts have had at the commencement of the youth justice task force back in February 2021, a mouldy agency action plan was created and from there a decision was made that each district around the state should have a mouldy agency panel. Every location will have different pieces, I guess, of the puzzle and how do we actually coordinate and join them up better. If we can start to do that you're actually going to start having a greater impact and there's almost like a multiplier effect that actually starts to happen. So with the youth corresponders we have a youth justice staff member that go alongside the QPS group. I think it's excellent. You know why I think it's excellent? Because it's the only business that works for 24 hours and all the other government departments work from 9 to 5. Crime is on every other side of that and the co-responder to my knowledge works with the children after hours. But again you need the right people working in those positions and we probably need more than what we've got in towns for at the moment. A youth co-responder was created to work with children who are on bail and to help support them with their justice orders and their bail compliance. However, we are to service all children across the board. I went on a program that the youth co-responders put out and I went on that they showed me all the activities and all that paddle boarding, rock climbing anything, you name it, it was there. I'm very passionate about working with young people working in the community breaking down the barriers of how kids and families think of police. We're more coming across more of that soft-entry approach consideration for some of their mental health and just allowing our QPS counterparts to further appreciate that there's a lot that's going on in the background for these young people. It was actually the first young person I met on my very first shift. It's the first day I had someone to actually talk to in 17 years. You're a police officer. Yes. You said, oh well if you're in this car you're now my friend. I guess I just felt like that was my safe place to talk about anything to them. But now I'm Auntie. I started going back to school looking for a job. If the co-responders was made when I was younger I reckon it would have helped a lot of people that are in juvie. And it's happening already. You can see it. We're able to assist the GD's crews because the kids and the families trust us and we can de-escalate situations really quickly because we've got that trust already. For the limited time I guess over a couple of years that we've had it I think it's paying dividends for us. We've now got five additional locations that will expand the co-youth responder model really tailoring the response to the individual location across the state. It's not having that cookie cutter approach where we're just going to replicate it in every area. So there's a punitive side of powers that police have and there's the discretionary diversionary powers that police have and that could be in the form of a caution official police caution getting a parent or guardian in with the young person also a restorative justice conference where that is organised by the youth justice. We heavily target those who are new to the justice system and they'll get in the victim or victims, the young offender police, support person lawyer and they'll actually discuss the offence and what effect that had on the parties involved and they'll organise and come in a great solution at the end so the young person doesn't appear in court. They've heard how it's impacted not only the victim but beyond the actual victim and then to agree to do something that's reparative for the victim as well as the community. If a young person goes through the restorative justice process and makes commitments in terms of what they're going to do to repair some of that harm they'll be given a time frame to do so and if they don't comply with that time frame and haven't completed their obligations then sometimes that matter can be referred back to police to say what are my other options and one of those might be that offence is now going to be sent to court so it's not just an opportunity for a young person to say sorry there's some commitment that normally follows it. I have always been someone who valued restorative justice conferencing for the right kids because I have seen this tend for a very long time the impact that has when it's done correctly. Between the Queensland Police Service and Youth Justice we created this 72-hour plan to make sure that from the point that the young person gets released from a detention centre there's someone there responsible, someone there to care for the young person and to support them and to supervise it for the next 72 hours. It's an important period of time because we do know that young people will gravitate straight back to the peer group because certainly what we can see is if you're a young person and you're exiting detention on a Friday afternoon and then you're being flown back to your community it may mean that services at the present time wouldn't connect to you until Monday or Tuesday. It is a key point in terms of risk mitigation for young people leaving custody but more over Youth Justice also have an ongoing enduring case plan that that young person will be subject to just regular reporting in the community after their release, ongoing engagement with programs or other interventions. There's been a number of legislation changes which have been really positive and having good effect. Some of that legislation includes electronic monitoring devices on some of our serious repeat offenders. Whilst there's been limited numbers I've seen some very positive results out of that. Now I know there are two different schools of thought about GPS, EMD but in the case of some of these young people they did not re-offend. Owner-onus provisions, so in relation to young offenders getting in cars and hooning, the owner-onus provisions now put an onus on the owner of the vehicle to say who owns the vehicle and who had the vehicle at the time an offence happened. Reverse presumption of bail has been an important measure for us and you will hear police talk about the revolving door So now it is upon the young offender to prove why they should get bail rather than the other way around that they would normally get bail. If you're stealing a motor vehicle or motor vehicles every night and you're breaking into homes the community would expect us to intervene and we certainly do as police and we work very hard on that and it's important that we do because that's about community safety. If we see some of that legislation and it builds on some of the work that's been done previously around our serious repeat offenders it needs to be looked at also with the initiatives that have been announced. Such as our high visibility policing that's been funded for the next two years is initiative in terms of enhancing our flying squad that doesn't just provide an ability to go on the ground to where it's needed in the hot spots but that particular model is bringing youth workers with our police into those areas across the state we've not done that before through a flying squad concept. So it's not just a legislation it's that working with all these other initiatives together that basically goes towards There is a group within the group of serious repeat offenders that are probably destined for adult jail they just will refuse any form of help and criminality is their way of life which is a sad thing but we won't give up on them. Does it sometimes feel like you're beating your head against the wall? Yes. But we do have some small wins and when we do we celebrate like hell. We've got a couple of young people that have got jobs and that's through pure good engagement like just solid engagement. We have somewhere they've gone from very high risk offending to now medium to low risk offending some who haven't committed an offence in the last six months which might not sound like a lot but for the young people that I'm thinking about is huge because as a young person start you know if they're starting offending at 10 it can tend to escalate in terms of the number of offences per year based on age so for them to hit 15 and they're offending to go down can be just unheard of. The next step really is to I guess embed the work of all agencies and service providers in the youth justice system because of the complexity of need of a young person it's not work that can be done in isolation no single government department can fix a young person. My thoughts of my future was jail and the road I was heading on was a very hard one because I was getting in trouble by the police never listened to no one and just kind of went my own way. We all have a responsibility here to make a difference that's why there have been various agencies involved in the task force so I say to victims we will continue to give this everything we have. If we can have community feeling that safe and obviously how much we can actually attain in success with some of our youth to be able to come back in the community to contribute to what we're doing. Now my dream is becoming a police officer and helping other younger kids actually respect the law and see what they're actually about. Once you start to do that you actually start to get some buy-in and some trust I'm not saying it's easy, it's hard it's quite challenging and it's difficult but when they actually see they're part of of that process you start to see those synergies have an impact and a ripple effect right across community.