![\"Harry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/79c273e48019ed8b8faee894b7b298cf7ebd216580b1e5a9fd28fffbad58fd04.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nExclusive: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t on my New Year\u2019s resolutions, I\u2019ll tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry* has been wearing an ankle bracelet for about seven months.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Harry said this ankle bracelet has helped keep him on track.\u00a0Nine.com.au<\/p>\n
The 17-year-old from Brisbane\u2019s south doesn\u2019t want to tell us what he did to earn the clunky jewellery, but says he\u2019s getting attention for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get a lot of looks when I walk around, when I\u2019m with my friends,\u00a0I always notice someone\u2019s always looking down at your ankle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just kinda my fault for what I\u2019ve done and that\u2019s the consequences I\u2019ve got to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nine.com.au met Harry when we rode along with one of Queensland\u2019s Youth Co-Responder Teams (YCRT), which pair a youth justice worker with a police officer to check in on high-risk young people to prevent crime.<\/p>\n
The YCRT program has been operating in some form since 2020 but was made permanent this year.<\/p>\n
Teams run 24\/7 statewide, running bail checks, issuing court reminders and connecting at-risk kids with community youth services.<\/p>\n
Harry tells us his dealings with the team have been \u201call good\u201d and that they look out for him, helping him charge up his electronic monitoring device, and make sure he\u2019s home by curfew.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve helped take me home a few times if I\u2019ve been stuck out somewhere and need a ride back home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say (before) I didn\u2019t have the best image (of police) but I reckon now I can kinda see why, they\u2019re just doing their job at the end of the day, and it\u2019s up to your actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just did some dumb stuff and have to pay the cost for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry told us he\u2019s keen to stay out of trouble and maybe get a blue card so he can work with young people like himself.<\/p>\n
We leave Harry with his support worker and team leader Brooke Sanders makes a call to the home of a young person who\u2019s recently had his first run-in with police.<\/p>\n
The boy\u2019s dad answers the phone and tells Sanders they\u2019ve already reached out to Headspace but would be open to hearing what other supports are available.<\/p>\n
He seems grateful for the call and Sanders makes a note to check in again next week.<\/p>\n
![\"Team](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/61792d0f5cd4396f989f2ff8adb914d69916a31625a40f956cfbe52cb3d4e328.png\")
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Team leader Brooke Sanders and Sergeant Belinda Goodsell make a call to the family of a child who had a run-in with police a few months ago.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n
Later in the evening, before the team begins their bail compliance checks, we drop in at PCYC Carindale.<\/p>\n
The team has recently started to engage some of the kids they support into PCYC\u2019s Channelling Healthy Aggression Mentoring Project (CHAMP).<\/p>\n
The program is a type of boxfit designed to teach basic health and fitness, discipline and respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally it\u2019s a vehicle to establish relationships with those young people and become a mentor to them over time,\u201d Acting Sergeant Tim Miller, the youth club manager at PCYC Carindale, explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very fortunate that we have that time unlike the frontline police who are going job to job, day in, day out – they\u2019re our frontline heroes out there – we have that time to engage with families.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fascinating how much trust we do get to build.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pressures, whether it be social media pressures, online pressures, mental health challenges, all the things that you would hope that they had the comfort to raise with their parents but I guess in that sense because we are that slightly (more) removed it\u2019s almost as like they\u2019re not as embarrassed to raise some of those issues with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9e0d31f81ee92c71b1566a5972f87bf0896231463398ab8414f25422e98b97b6.png\")
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Sergeant Tim Miller and youth co-responder team leader Brooke Sanders with a volunteer at the PCYC After Dark event.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n
Sergeant Belinda Goodsell, who came to the Youth Co-Responder program from a plainclothes role, said she was able to build trust simply by following through on her word.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re able to break down a lot of the barriers\u00a0that they have previously had with police,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI give that young person an opportunity to get to know me and obviously understand that we\u2019re here in\u00a0a different space than\u00a0other times they may have engaged with police, and we\u2019re here to support them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanders said there was usually common contributing factors that led to kids coming into contact with police and some were breaching bail simply because they didn\u2019t understand their bail conditions, often due to learning disabilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngagement with antisocial peers is a very strong risk factor for a lot of our young people<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of it is also intergenerational\u00a0trauma, also drug and alcohol misuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not bad kids… (they\u2019re) making wrong choices.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, is it working or not?<\/p>\n
The government insists early intervention programs, along with its Adult Crime, Adult Time crackdown, are helping \u201cturn the tide\u201d on the youth crime crisis.<\/p>\n
In Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Thursday, the number of victims in Queensland dropped\u00a0to\u00a0277,411\u00a0in 2025, more than 12,000 less than the previous year.<\/p>\n
According to the Queensland Government Statistician\u2019s Office Crime Report Queensland 2024-25,\u00a0released in April, the number of youth offenders had also dropped 16.7 per cent compared to 2023-24.<\/p>\n
But fluctuations in crime statistics cannot be easily traced to any one program or initiative.<\/p>\n
An independent evaluation of the YCRT program in 2024 found only 12 per cent of young people did not reoffend in the six months following their engagement with the program.<\/p>\n
The report found the greatest reduction in reoffending was with serious repeat offenders with a 73 per cent reduction in young people who had 10 or more offences.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/df02fad0693d9b8dce8b7cf484f9a6a57f5bcb4b8033e36267fabd5537523485.png\")
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A screenshot from a TikTok video showing a car with bare rims, purportedly filmed by teens.\u00a0TikTok<\/p>\n
Specifically, it found it was contributing to reductions in break and enter, illegal use of a motor vehicle and theft.<\/p>\n
These crimes are synonymous with the youth crime crisis, after tragedies like the death of Emma Lovell, who was stabbed when she confronted two intruders to her home<\/a> in 2022, and Kate Leadbetter and Matthew Field, who were killed, along with their unborn child, in 2021<\/a> by a teenager driving a stolen car while under the influence of cannabis and alcohol.<\/p>\n Teens sneaking into a house and stealing a set of keys for a joyride even became a viral social media trend.<\/p>\n This screenshot taken from a TikTok video shows a car being driven at speed. The camera zooms out to show the BMW is being driven by a young man.\u00a0TikTok<\/p>\n TikTok accounts show Brisbane teens glorifying car theft, dangerous driving, and antisocial behaviour, despite \u201cpost and boast\u201d laws making it punishable by two years in prison.<\/p>\n Queensland\u2019s Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber said both early intervention and strong laws and sentencing were required to tackle youth crime.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing the next phase of adult crime, adult time which ensures that there are consequences for youth that breach their bail … but we\u2019re not doing that in isolation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why we have (the Youth Co-Responder Team) that\u2019s funded permanently with permanent police officers to ensure alongside that there is effective early intervention and rehabilitation to prevent as many young people as possible coming into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place.<\/p>\n Youth justice minister Laura Gerber said the state needed both early intervention programs and strong laws to tackle youth crime.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n \u201cIt is all about ensuring that youth that would otherwise perhaps have antisocial behaviour or be at risk of going down a life of crime, instead they\u2019ve got a mentor\u00a0and a person they can turn to that helps them get back on the right track.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the statistics, Sanders told nine.com.au she\u2019s seen the evidence, describing how an adult she supported as a child approached her at a community sporting event years later.<\/p>\n \u201cNot a young person anymore, an adult, actually pulled me aside and said, \u2018I have a full-time job now, yes I made some really\u00a0silly mistakes but you pulled me aside, your team was so supportive.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cJust to see that young people can turn it around and make something of themselves is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n *Name has been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t on my New Year\u2019s resolutions, I\u2019ll tell you that.\u201d Harry* has been wearing an ankle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-879156","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\/879156","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=879156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/a5cdff945ec0d6b02b1e5eb7b5c0814f3ed7404048d97d6c1083964d0bb48a86.png\")
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