{"id":750084,"date":"2026-06-21T03:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T03:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/750084\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T03:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T03:54:19","slug":"youth-crime-qld-can-staying-on-track-program-fix-revolving-door-of-youth-detention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/750084\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth crime QLD: Can Staying on Track program fix revolving door of youth detention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: A 16-year-old boy lies in bed, crashed out in his clothes while re-runs of The Big Bang Theory play on a large TV in the too-small room.<\/p>\n

Usually an unremarkable scene, except today it\u2019s not his mother who will rouse him and nag him to get ready for school.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A 16-year-old boy is arrested at a home in Thornlands.\u00a0Queensland Police Service<\/p>\n

Today it\u2019s police officers who surround him, handcuff him, and read him his charges.<\/p>\n

The boy is alleged to have broken into homes and stolen cars on a three-week spree across South Brisbane in May.<\/p>\n

He was charged with six counts of unlawful use of a motor vehicle, and at least eight break and enter-related offences – crimes punishable with a lengthy imprisonment under Queensland\u2019s \u201cAdult Crime, Adult Time\u201d laws.<\/p>\n

He is just one of the 1238 juvenile offenders charged in the first 90 days of Operation Yankee Forge, a six-month, statewide crackdown on high-harm, high-volume offences and targeting repeat offenders, which has just passed its half-way mark.<\/p>\n

According to Police Minister Dan Purdie, \u201cevery one of these arrests means\u00a0fewer dangerous offenders on our streets, fewer homes and businesses being broken into\u201d.<\/p>\n

For a while, perhaps. <\/p>\n

But even those who are sentenced to youth detention are eventually released, and when they are, nine in ten (94 per cent) of them are back committing crime within a year, according to the latest statistics from the Department of Youth Justice.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Queensland government announced it would attempt to fix the revolving door of youth detention.<\/p>\n

It committed to fund an \u201cunprecedented\u201d 12 months of rehabilitation for every child leaving youth detention across the state with a program called Staying on Track, which would replace the former 72-hour post-release support program.<\/p>\n

The program pairs youths with mentors who visit them in detention, and connect with their family and community, to plan for their release, which can include school or employment as well as community engagement.<\/p>\n

\u2018You have to give them something worth giving up crime for\u2019<\/p>\n

Selena Walters, who founded Fearless Towards Success, an organisation delivering the program in Ipswich, told nine.com.au locking kids up did little to deter them from crime once they were released.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to punish these kids, fair enough, punish them, but if you don\u2019t support them when they get out, they\u2019ll be back in your homes, back in your cars, and it won\u2019t make any difference,\u201d Walters said.<\/p>\n

\"Selena<\/p>\n

Selena Walters, founder of Fearless Towards Success belives locking kids up is futile without mentorship.\u00a0Fearless Towards Success<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just keep slapping around the most marginalised kids and those from majority low socioeconomic areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said about a third of kids in youth detention have at least one parent in jail and more than half have witnessed or been a victim of domestic violence.<\/p>\n

Most of them stopped going to school in Year 7 or 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not normal youth work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Premier<\/p>\n

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and Youth Justice minister Laura Gerber at the launch of Staying on Track at Fearless Towards Success in Ipswich.\u00a0Fearless Towards Success<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a life coach, de-facto parent, you need to be firm with these kids… have good boundaries and make them accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI say to my staff, you need to give these kids something worth giving up crime for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI say, don\u2019t ever promise these kids anything you can\u2019t deliver because you\u2019ll break that trust and that\u2019s what everybody else has done in their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said two of the children involved in the program are now completing a 20-week paid traineeship and their mentor is helping them save for their first car, in money tins.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s literally things that a parent would do to help guide their own child and support them… things that they\u2019ve never even been taught before.\u201d<\/p>\n

She believes kids leaving detention without support often resort to crime to get their basic needs met.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A young person in the Fearless Doing Success program during a trade workshop.\u00a0Fearless Towards Success<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine everything that your kid asks you for support, these kids just don\u2019t have that person in their life.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir parent is in jail or their mum\u2019s on ice because she\u2019s being beaten up by her boyfriend.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re coming out with no ID, no birth certificate… (they) can\u2019t open a bank account, can\u2019t access Centrelink… some don\u2019t even have phones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen overlaying that is all of that peer pressure… those peers who are trying to draw them back into doing the things that they were doing that that got them locked up in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if you\u2019re coming out, and you don\u2019t have all of those things in place and somebody to support you, it\u2019s a no-brainer that within a week, you\u2019re probably back out doing break-ins just to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Housing a major barrier to rehabilitation<\/p>\n

Walters said the kids in her program were engaged and \u201cgrabbing the program with both hands\u201d but real challenges remained for many of them in finding safe homes if their family home was no longer appropriate.<\/p>\n

She estimated about half of the children in youth detention are also in the child safety system, which the government has admitted is failing Queensland children, exposing them to more abuse and neglect.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A young person in the Fearless Towards Success program working in a car wash.\u00a0Fearless Towards Success<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many instances, the residential homes that are housing some of these really complex kids aren\u2019t suitable at all,\u201d Walters said.<\/p>\n

The Commission of Inquiry into Child Safety handed down its final report last month, which found the system needs a massive overhaul and is \u201ctoo heavily\u201d reliant on residential care, community-based housing designed as a last resort when family-based foster or kinship care placements cannot be found.<\/p>\n

Queensland has almost as many children in residential care as every other Australian state and territory combined, run by often unlicensed providers with limited oversight.<\/p>\n

Walters said other kids who probably should have come under the eye of Child Safety had slipped through the cracks and had no choice but to \u201cfend for themselves\u201d often couch-surfing or staying with peers.<\/p>\n

Their criminal past usually makes them poor candidates for rentals, Youth Foyers and other homelessness programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do all of this wonderful work, but if you haven\u2019t got somewhere safe and stable to live, how can you ever hold down a job, or do training, or even go back to school?\u201d<\/p>\n

It takes a village to rehabilitate a child<\/p>\n

Moana Wati is the national practice manager for SHINE for Kids, which runs the Staying on Track program for more than 100 young people in Cairns and Townsville.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a Maori woman whose brother was sent to youth detention and then to adult prison.<\/p>\n

She said watching the impact of her brother\u2019s incarceration on her father and the shame it brought, motivated her to pursue this work with family and community at the centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very confronting thing to go back into community after being put in a detention centre,\u201d Wati said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes we get to do these programs but we\u2019re only working with the young person themselves, and we send them home to families that are not necessarily set up to support them. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s great about (Staying on Track) is that we can work with the caregivers, the family and we can work with community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that adage that it takes a village? I\u2019m watching that working out in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wati said one of her Indigenous mentors working with an Indigenous youth coming out of detention had spent months earning the trust of the youth\u2019s grandmother, who is his primary caregiver, and building connections in their local community.<\/p>\n

\"Moana<\/p>\n

Moana Wati, the SHINE for Kids practice manager, grew up with a brother in youth detention and watched the impact of that on her proud Maori father.\u00a0Shine for Kids<\/p>\n

She said it wasn\u2019t uncommon for grandparents who become primary caregivers to get overwhelmed, exhausted and become distrusting and disillusioned by government services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat youth mentor really identified that she (grandmother) was the backbone to that young person\u2019s transition,\u201d Wati said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey felt the grandmother went from being quite hostile at times and not very understanding to really working well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe young person, who used to be incredibly hard on himself, became very reflective to the point that he was very remorseful for what he had done.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said he performed a rendition of Michael Jackson\u2019s hit Man In The Mirror, for both his grandmother and the mentor, having changed the lyrics to tell his own redemption story.<\/p>\n

Another young person went with his mentor to the council on the island where he lived to sort out issues with identification documents.<\/p>\n

In the time he was there, he won the staff over so thoroughly he was offered a full-time job.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about\u00a0being that steady, independent person that\u2019s obviously not part of the family, not government, but being that presence that walks alongside them,\u201d Wati said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really have to be ready for everything and anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why this work is so complex, this cohort of young people and the severity of the things that got them in trouble in the first place, the trauma and the disadvantage is real.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about working with them, hopefully giving them some hope that it doesn\u2019t always have to be that way, that they can break the cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government has committed to fund Staying on Track for five years at a cost of $225 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: A 16-year-old boy lies in bed, crashed out in his clothes while re-runs of The Big Bang…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-750084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}