Cops slam kids’ ankle bracelets as a burden on staffing
Andrew Stafford |
Police and youth advocates are querying whether new state laws that will see children as young as 10 fitted with ankle bracelets are workable.
The Queensland government has passed a bill that will see young people who are on bail fitted with electronic monitoring devices.
Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber said the laws will reduce reoffending, in line with the state’s campaign to lower youth crime.
The laws are an extension of a 2021 trial by the former Labor government, which saw ankle monitors fitted to repeat offenders aged from 15 to 18 while on bail.
But with children expected to be responsible for keeping the devices charged and in working order, concerns have been raised about the law’s practical application.
In a rebuke to the government, Queensland Police Union Shane Prior told AAP in a statement that police did not have sufficient resources to deal with the volume of alerts sent by the bracelets.
He said during the trial period, of the 5677 alerts police were requested to respond to, only one resulted in a breach of bail, with one in five due to a flat battery.
“Every police crew that is sent to one of these false alarms is unable to attend to urgent domestic violence calls or another emergency,” he said.
“There needs to be a serious rethink (about) forcing this monitoring work on to police.”
Katherine Hayes, CEO of the Youth Advocacy Centre, said the extension of bracelets to 10-year-olds would “probably make more headlines than have any actual impact on kids offending”.
She said even youths aged 15 to 18 struggled to keep their devices charged, particularly in areas with poor network coverage.
“Young kids, 10 to 14, are going to have even more trouble,” she said.
“Police are quite pragmatic, so they may go to the kid’s house, find them sitting there with a flat device, and they won’t charge them for that one-off,” she said.
Ms Hayes said the only way to put victims first in the fight against youth crime was to address the underlying causes.
“They often come from violent homes, they have a lot of dysfunction in their backgrounds,” she said.
Queensland Youth Services CEO Pania Brown said “it’s hard enough to get a 10-year-old to clean their room, let alone make sure they’ve charged a device like that”.
But she also said the community was looking for new solutions to youth crime.
“We are in support, providing that it is coupled with early intervention programs and services,” Ms Brown said.
She said electronic monitoring could make it easier for magistrates to send young offenders home instead of incarcerating them on remand.
AAP
