Youth justice and bail
For the last year, my home of Goondiwindi feels like it has become a hot spot for repeat youth offenders. While this is not the whole story, many people in my community have grown frustrated.
This frustration has not been representative of the work being done to deal with this issue. As a result of community needs:
- Goondiwindi Police Station has been upgraded to a full time station, with additional police officers,
- Changes to the Youth Justice Act to make bail more difficult for recidivous offenders,
- Community forums to address the issues from a multi-agency perspective, and
- Special taskforce operations by Queensland Police to target offenders.
More and more people are seeing the outcome of the above actions. This mixed with weekly updates from the Goondiwindi Police provide more understanding about the actions being taken. Despite this, in July 2022 I was approached about a specific case where a person was given bail while having many charges. I wrote to the Minister to seek more clarity about this and what is being done to tackle youth crime.
Please see below correspondence sent to the Attorney-General and Minister for Youth Justice in the middle of 2022.
Letter to Attorney-General regarding Youth Bail (PDF)