Change the Record and the Human Rights Law Centre strongly condemn the Crisafulli Government’s Making Queensland Safer Bill 2024

The laws will lock up even more children in Queensland’s overcrowded and unsafe police watch houses and youth prisons. The laws will disproportionately imprison Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and children with disabilities.

We recommend:

1. The Bill should not be passed.

2. The Queensland Government should provide decision-making power, control and resources to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations and communities to build alternative, self-determined supports for First Nations children that meet their needs and divert them away from the criminal legal system.

3. The Queensland Government should urgently establish an alternative, community service-led model for children who are already interacting with the criminal legal system. This too should be a self-determined model led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations and communities.

4. The Queensland Government should stop detaining children in adult watch houses.

5. The Queensland Government should prohibit, in law, the use of solitary confinement, strip searching and spit hoods on children in police cells and prisons.

6. If, against the advice of First Nations, legal and community sector stakeholders and experts, the Committee recommends the Bill be passed, the Bill should be amended so that:

   1. it does not apply to children under the age of 14;

   2. non-violent offences and offences which do not carry a risk of serious harm to another person are not captured in the ‘adult crime, adult time’ provisions;

   3. restorative justice orders remain an option for sentencing children;

   4. the Children’s Court retains discretion to issue exclusion orders;

   5. it requires an independent review of the amendments 12 months from commencement;

   6. there are no override declarations under section 43(1) of the Human Rights Act 2019 (Human Rights Act); and

   7. if recommendation 6(f) is not adopted, any override declaration is limited to 15 months from when it commences, with no provision for extension.

7. If the Committee recommends the Bill be passed, the Queensland Government should provide an immediate funding boost for existing First Nations, community, health and legal services that address the root causes of offending and support children in contact with the criminal legal system.

Read the full submission here.