The Palaszczuk Government will take further steps to address youth crime in Cairns, with new funding to improve community safety announced today.
Minister for Child Safety, Youth and Women Di Farmer said the additional investment would improve the safety of the Cairns community through additional initiatives to cut youth offending and reoffending.
"The Cairns community has a right to feel safe, and expects young people to be accountable for their actions," Ms Farmer said.
"The best way to keep the community safe is by preventing young people from offending and reoffending in the first place.
"Our Youth Justice Strategy is about changing the story for young people," she said.
Speaker and Member for Mulgrave Curtis Pitt welcomed the reforms, and said they were the next step in implementing the Palaszczuk Government's Youth Justice Strategy which was released last year.
"One of the really significant things we're doing in Cairns is to establish a Community Youth Response. Building on the success of our first program in Townsville, we're investing $15 million to establish three new CYRs around Queensland.
"The Community Youth Response brings together several different services and programs – things like after-hours diversion services, mentoring programs and alternative education bridging programs.
"We've seen promising results from the first CYR in Townsville with the highest risk young offenders reducing their offending by twenty-five percent, and I have every confidence the Cairns community can achieve similar or better results."
Member for Cairns Michael Healy said further funding will go to a new Transition 2 Success (T2S) program in Cairns, part of $27 million being allocated to expand the program statewide,.
"We're also building on the success of existing Cairns programs that have been achieving solid results like Transition 2 Success, the Youth Justice Restorative Justice Conferencing and the Conditional Bail Program," he said.
"There is good evidence to show that these programs work to prevent re-offending.
"Of the young people who go through Transition 2 Success programs, almost 6 out of 10 don't go on to reoffend.
"Seventy-seven percent of young people who go through Restorative Justice Conferencing don't reoffend, or reduce the magnitude of their reoffending, and that's really positive stuff."
Member for Barron River Craig Crawford said the benefits extended beyond reducing crime rates.
"Another initiative we're funding will extend the Queensland Police Service's "Project Booyah" mentoring program for at risk young people through the new follow on program "Framing the Future"," he said.
"Out of these initiatives, we're seeing young people turn away from crime and becoming productive members of society.
"Young people are re-engaging with education, they're getting qualifications and getting into employment.
"These programs aren't just cutting rates of reoffending, they're actually changing the story for these young people, and that's the outcome the Cairns community wants."
The Cairns and overall state funding is part of a more than $320 million tranche of reforms to keep Queensland communities safe while steering at-risk young people away from crime, following on from the Queensland Government's Youth Justice Strategy, announced late last year.
An action plan to support the strategy is scheduled to be released mid-year.
