The Courier-Mail, 29 July 2026

Queenslanders are being told that locking up more children will make them safer. We often hear that ‘Jail will teach kids a lesson’. While this is a simple message that feels like commonsense, it is actually false reassurance, because the evidence shows that locking up children as young as 10 years of age will lead to more crime, and more serious crime. Jail does not ‘teach kids a lesson’ and does not make communities safer.

We all want to prevent crime before it happens and no one should be living in fear of crime. That’s why we desperately need governments to pay attention to decades of evidence from around the world about what works to achieve astonishing and sustained reductions in crime by children.

This month the Crisafulli Government announced the next phase of Adult Crime, Adult Time with a new "Breach Bail, Go to Jail" offence carrying a mandatory minimum sentence for children who offend while on bail. The length of that minimum sentence hasn't even been decided – all we have is the headline: bail is a privilege, not a right, the Premier says.

This is a slogan, not a crime prevention strategy. Simply repeating it doesn't make it true. Passing more ‘tough on crime’ laws to punish even more children is an approach that has not worked anywhere in the world. That’s because crime by children is a symptom of their unmet needs that we are failing to address, and incarceration only hardens and harms these vulnerable children.
The answer, backed by decades of data from Australia and overseas, is remarkably consistent. 

Locking up a child is not ‘accountability’, it is punishment. Jailing children does not reset them. It harms and entrenches them — exposing them to older, more serious offenders, interrupting school and family relationships at the worst possible moment, and sending them back onto the street with fewer options than when they went in. In Queensland, 70% of children are back under sentenced supervision within a year Why would we choose to make that reoffending rate worse?

We don't have to guess what happens when governments respond to fear with tougher youth justice laws. Several countries already ran that experiment. In the past, countries like the USA tried approaches such as what is happening in Queensland now, passing laws that incarcerated young people as adults. These children were ultimately found to be 34 per cent more likely to reoffend.  

Over the past 25 years, several states in the US have cut youth imprisonment by 75 per cent.  Political leaders chose to act on evidence-based programs that significantly reduced reoffending and invest in community-based alternatives to prisons. Youth arrests fell by 78 per cent — four times the rate of the decline in adult arrests.

Several other countries such as Spain and Scotland have had similar dramatic reductions in crime by ensuring that children get the therapeutic, educational, health and wellbeing care that they need, even when more serious crimes have occurred. 

That’s not what is happening in jails where we incarcerate children in Queensland. Nine in ten children in Queensland detention haven't been sentenced. Almost 60% have experienced domestic and family violence, around half have a mental health or behavioural disorder, and one in four have experienced unstable housing. The tough on crime approach is just making children ‘tougher’. It’s not helping these children or our communities.

The warning signs are already here. Queensland's own Audit Office reported this month that the state's corrective services are operating over capacity, with lockdowns triggered by staff shortages leading to children spending extended periods locked in their cells because there aren't enough staff, and sometimes in solitary confinement.  

Accountability matters. Real accountability reduces the chance a child reoffends and helps to make the community safer.

Queenslanders have been presented with a false choice: either lock up more children or accept more crime. 

Yet there is decades of evidence available to assist the government to choose approaches that actually prevent crime and make the community safer. Currently the government is making poor choices that are not based on evidence.

Queenslanders deserve more than reassuring slogans. Queenslanders deserve the truth. And the truth is simple: jail doesn't teach children a lesson. It teaches too many of them how to do more crime each time they come back. 

Anne Hollonds AO is former National Children's Commissioner and spokesperson for the Justice Reform Initiative.