QLD Youth Justice The State, The Funnel, The Money, The Network, The Evidence, The Place
Australia's most-debated youth-justice system, sourced. Live watchhouse occupancy refreshes from QPS twice daily. Funding flows through the QLD state budget, federal procurement, and foundation giving. Cross-system pathways from child protection, disability, AOD, and education traced via 13 QLD LGAs. ALMA evidence base shown in §5–§17, where each count carries its filter (e.g. 16 QLD-tagged YJ interventions in §16; 5 effective-but-unfunded in §17; 23 MH-typed and 12 AOD-typed across the national catalogue, §6).
TLDR · 30 seconds
The single chart of this report
Detention spend doubled. Recidivism rose with it.
Same time axis, two ROGS lines. The yellow markers below the chart are the legislative moments. Spend climbed; the bills got tighter; the reoffend rate kept rising.
Spend, +144% over the window (2015-16 → 2024-25). Recidivism, +11.0pp (2014-15 → 2022-23). The blue dip in FY20 is a covid artefact, lockdowns shrank the opportunity to offend, but the rate snapped back above pre-pandemic levels and kept climbing. The political answer to a rising reoffend rate has consistently been to expand custody, not community capacity. Source: Productivity Commission ROGS 2026, jurisdictional youth-justice tables.
QLD already supervises ~860 young people in the community every day, 2.9× the number locked up. Yet detention costs $2,845 per child per night, and 72% of children released come back within 12 months. The case for community-based support isn't hypothetical, it's already running, underfunded.
8
Children · adult watchhouses · today
63% First Nations · live from QPS, refreshed twice daily.
$2,845
Per bed-night · detention
$298M ÷ 287 avg nightly × 365 (2024-25)
71.5%
Recidivism · 12 months · 2022-23
ROGS Section 17. Trended up over the past five years while detention spend more than doubled.
The funnel tonight · QLD young people under youth-justice supervision
8
in adult police watchhouses
Live from QPS · today · 63% First Nations.
~296
in youth detention each night
AIHW avg nightly · 2024-25Q4 · ~264 on remand (89%), not yet sentenced.
~860
on community supervision orders
ROGS avg daily · 2024-25. Roughly 2.9× more young people on community orders than locked up, yet detention takes 1.3× the spend.
The system's direction of travel · all three at once
Custody capacity
Expanding. +120 beds in build (Woodford 80 + Cairns 40), Wacol opened 2025.
Two budget windows: Cumulative dataset $1.88B detention vs $1.49B community (2008–2026, justice_funding). Current-year ROGS recurrent: $298M detention (2024-25). Same direction of travel; different denominators. Full explainer in §8.
Live data from the police-custody publication, audited spend lines, and First Nations over-representation trends.
§1 · LIVE
In QLD watchhouses, right now
Auto-refreshed twice daily from the Queensland Police Service watchhouse-occupancy publication. Last snapshot: 15 May 2026, 8:00 am.
Children in custody
8
Across 3 watchhouses
First Nations children
63%
5 of 8. ~5% of QLD's 10–17 population.
Children > 2 days
2
Adult cells, no programs. Longest: 3d.
Adults > 7 days
66
Of 430; 28% First Nations. Longest 12d.
Watchhouse
Age
In custody
First Nations
> 7d
Longest
Townsville Watch-house
Child
4
3 (75%)
—
3
Rockhampton Watch-house
Child
2
1 (50%)
—
1
Brisbane Watch-house
Child
2
1 (50%)
—
—
Southport Watch-house
Adult
61
2 (3%)
8
9
Cairns Watch-house
Adult
42
24 (57%)
2
10
Brisbane Watch-house
Adult
39
10 (26%)
2
12
Ipswich District Watch-house
Adult
32
8 (25%)
3
9
Townsville Watch-house
Adult
27
12 (44%)
—
7
Caboolture Watch-house
Adult
24
2 (8%)
5
11
Logan District Watch-house
Adult
23
4 (17%)
—
7
Toowoomba Watch-house
Adult
19
6 (32%)
4
9
Richlands Watch-house
Adult
18
3 (17%)
1
8
Caloundra Watch-house
Adult
17
9 (53%)
—
7
Maroochydore Watch-house
Adult
16
4 (25%)
2
9
Rockhampton Watch-house
Adult
15
5 (33%)
—
7
Pine Rivers Watch-house
Adult
13
2 (15%)
1
9
Mackay Watch-house
Adult
12
1 (8%)
—
4
Cleveland Watch-house
Adult
9
1 (11%)
1
9
Mareeba Watch-house
Adult
7
4 (57%)
—
6
Coolangatta Watch-house
Adult
7
1 (14%)
3
8
Mount Isa Watch-house
Adult
6
4 (67%)
—
6
Gympie Watch-house
Adult
5
1 (20%)
—
7
Murgon Watch-house
Adult
5
4 (80%)
—
2
Bundaberg Watch-house
Adult
5
0 (0%)
1
8
Warwick Watch-house
Adult
4
3 (75%)
1
8
Dalby Watch-house
Adult
4
1 (25%)
3
9
Hervey Bay Watch-house
Adult
3
0 (0%)
—
3
Maryborough Watch-house
Adult
3
0 (0%)
—
6
Whitsunday Watch-house
Adult
2
0 (0%)
—
—
Gladstone Watch-house
Adult
2
1 (50%)
—
1
Pormpuraaw Station
Adult
2
2 (100%)
—
1
Redcliffe Watch-house
Adult
1
0 (0%)
—
—
Mornington Island Watch-house
Adult
1
1 (100%)
—
—
Kingaroy Watch-house
Adult
1
0 (0%)
—
—
Innisfail Watch-house
Adult
1
1 (100%)
—
—
Dunwich Station
Adult
1
1 (100%)
—
1
Bamaga Station
Adult
1
1 (100%)
—
1
Weipa Station
Adult
1
1 (100%)
—
—
Ayr Station
Adult
1
0 (0%)
—
—
§2
The bed problem, detention occupancy + watchhouse-as-overflow
QLD operates 3 youth-detention facilities with a combined capacity of 220 beds. When detention runs near capacity, watchhouses become overflow. Below: facilities + a 60-day trailing average of children in police watchhouses.
Operational facilities
Brisbane Youth Detention Centre
postcode — · 65% Indigenous
96 beds
West Moreton Youth Detention Centre
postcode — · 58% Indigenous
76 beds
Cleveland Youth Detention Centre
postcode — · 72% Indigenous
48 beds
Planned + recently-opened (curated)
Wacol Youth Remand Centre
recently-opened
Wacol, Brisbane · 76 beds (remand-only) · $250M+ construction · ~$150M first three years operations
Announced 21 Sep 2023 (Palaszczuk Labor Government). Officially opened and began transferring young people in early 2025 under the Crisafulli LNP Government. Operates remand-only, reduces watchhouse overflow but adds detention capacity rather than community alternatives.
Woodford (north of Brisbane) · 80 beds (planned) · up to $627.61M reported (industry tracker)
Sod turned February 2024 (Palaszczuk Labor); BESIX Watpac (QLD) Pty Ltd appointed as lead contractor. Project continues under the Crisafulli LNP Government. Completion target 2026.
Announced under Palaszczuk Labor; site selection consultation through 2024. Forecast operational 2027. Combined with Woodford, adds 120 beds to QLD detention capacity.
Curated from public QLD-government announcements. Not yet ingested into the structured detention dataset; we're building the pipeline.
Methodology: capital figures sourced from industry trackers and ministerial statements. QLD Budget Paper 3 line-by-line reconciliation pending.
Children in watchhouses · 60-day trend
04-28
15.0
04-30
10.5
05-01
5.5
05-02
5.0
05-03
9.0
05-04
14.0
05-05
21.0
05-06
17.5
05-07
21.0
05-08
18.0
05-09
12.0
05-10
22.0
05-11
19.5
05-12
19.0
05-13
17.0
05-14
14.0
05-15
8.0
First NationsOther
§3
Who's in custody, Closing the Gap target 11 progress
National Agreement on Closing the Gap: target 11 commits to reducing the rate of First Nations young people in detention by 30% by 2031. Below: QLD's actual rate vs the target trajectory.
First Nations share · QLD detention
~65–75%
AIHW Youth Detention Population 2024-25, range across quarterly snapshots. Compared to ~5% First Nations share of QLD's 10–17 population.
ACCO funding share · QLD YJ grants
12%
Aboriginal Community-Controlled share of justice_funding dollars (CivicGraph). Frame your grants against the AIHW denominator, not the population baseline.
2016-17Actual 30.9/10K · CTG trajectory 37.8/10K · Gap -6.9
2017-18Actual 34.5/10K · CTG trajectory 37.8/10K · Gap -3.3
2018-19Actual 37.8/10K · CTG trajectory 37.8/10K · Gap 0.0
2019-20Actual 29.5/10K · CTG trajectory 36.9/10K · Gap -7.4
2020-21Actual 29.9/10K · CTG trajectory 35.9/10K · Gap -6.0
2021-22Actual 36.1/10K · CTG trajectory 35.0/10K · Gap +1.1
2022-23Actual 40.0/10K · CTG trajectory 34.0/10K · Gap +6.0
2023-24Actual 41.1/10K · CTG trajectory 33.1/10K · Gap +8.0
Actual rate (per 10,000 First Nations young people)CTG trajectory: linear path from 2018-19 baseline (37.8) to 30% reduction (26.5) by 2030–31
Source: v_ctg_youth_justice_progress. Trajectory computed from official Closing the Gap baseline year (2018-19) per National Agreement.
VOLUME 2
The Funnel
Cross-linked pathways: child protection, disability, mental health, addiction, and education disengagement that funnel children into the youth-justice system.
§4
The pipeline, vulnerability hotspots by QLD LGA
Top 15 QLD Local Government Areas ranked by pipeline intensity, a composite score from lga_cross_system_stats combining welfare-recipient density, school disadvantage, and Indigenous-population share. With cross-system context: NDIS youth, JobSeeker, schools, and tracked funding.
LGA
Youth pop
Pipeline intensity
Indig. %
NDIS youth
JobSeeker
Schools
Funding tracked
Lockyer Valley
4,560
70.0
12.2%
1,366
1,740
26
$66.6M
Mareeba
2,465
49.2
27.1%
599
1,690
14
$181.6M
Somerset
2,730
49.2
14.0%
886
1,110
19
$35.0M
Southern Downs
3,894
49.2
13.9%
1,318
1,690
35
$37.2M
Tablelands
2,835
43.1
23.7%
756
1,465
17
$130.4M
Douglas
1,334
43.1
17.5%
252
705
8
$94.6M
Scenic Rim
4,706
41.5
7.8%
1,405
1,655
29
$202.3M
Toowoomba
18,909
36.9
12.9%
6,182
6,525
88
$339.0M
Ipswich
26,119
30.8
13.2%
9,931
10,570
80
$184.2M
Brisbane
137,609
25.5
5.1%
29,711
32,335
318
$17.04B
Cairns
18,241
24.6
22.9%
4,890
8,175
51
$957.0M
Gold Coast
69,273
18.5
5.0%
16,827
18,820
110
$1.40B
Goondiwindi
1,087
18.5
20.3%
238
390
11
$31.4M
Source: lga_cross_system_stats. Pipeline intensity is a composite score (welfare density + school disadvantage + Indigenous share). Youth pop estimated from QLD state-level 10–17 share (10.4% per ABS ERP June 2024) where per-LGA ABS data not yet ingested, flagged in sources.youth_population_method. Per-LGA youth-offender rates aren't yet sourced into this dataset for QLD. Funding = grants traced through this LGA in our dataset.
§5
Disability & justice, NDIS youth in QLD
The disability-criminalisation pipeline: cognitive impairment, autism, FASD and intellectual disability are over-represented in detention. Below: NDIS youth (15–18) by category in QLD overall.
NDIS participants total
163,122
Youth (15–18)
86,747
Psychosocial
12,691
Intellectual
18,594
Autism
71,536
Source: v_ndis_youth_justice_overlay. AIHW Youth Justice reporting identifies cognitive disability over-representation in the cohort; NDIS data is one of the only structured records of disability supports for young people 15–18. Categories are not mutually exclusive: a participant can hold more than one primary disability classification, so the autism / intellectual / psychosocial counts may sum higher than the youth (15–18) total.
§6
The mental health & AOD blind spot
The data gap is the policy gap. CivicGraph indexes thousands of QLD justice-funding rows and ALMA-catalogued programs. Mental-health and alcohol-and-other-drug surface counts:
QLD justice grants tagged mental-health or AOD
0
Out of thousands of grants. The funding stream doesn't name the issue.
ALMA mental-health programs · QLD
23
Identified by intervention type or description.
ALMA AOD programs · QLD
12
Alcohol, drug, addiction-tagged programs.
AIHW Youth Justice reporting consistently identifies high rates of mental-health and substance-use co-morbidity in the cohort. The QLD justice-funding stream tags 0 rows for mental health or AOD. If you can't name the issue in the data, you can't fund it accountably.
§7
Education disengagement → welfare → offending
Welfare payments (Disability Support Pension, JobSeeker, Youth Allowance) cluster in the same QLD LGAs as low-ICSEA schools and high youth-offender rates. The pipeline doesn't start with the police, it starts with disengagement.
The §4 hotspot table above shows that LGAs with the highest pipeline-intensity scores also carry the highest count of low-ICSEA schools (the ACARA Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage; lower scores indicate concentrated disadvantage). The system doesn't fail at the courthouse; it fails at the schoolyard.
The disengagement concentration
Top 10 hotspot LGAs vs the rest of QLD
The top 10 hotspot LGAs by pipeline intensity hold 69.6% of QLD's population, but a disproportionate share of the welfare and disadvantage signals that precede the courthouse. The disengagement pipeline shows up in the data before the offending does.
69.6%
Population share
1,972,710 of 2,832,709 QLD residents.
71.4%
DSP share
58,740 of 82,265 on Disability Support Pension.
67.6%
JobSeeker share
59,485 of 88,035 on JobSeeker.
69.6%
Youth Allowance share
7,240 of 10,395 on Youth Allowance.
62.5%
Low-ICSEA schools
40 of 64 below-average schools.
Hotspot share roughly tracks population share. Blue bars = signals running at or below population share. Source: lga_cross_system_stats · DSS Demographics + ABS ERP + ACARA ICSEA aggregates.
LGA
Youth pop
DSP
JobSeeker
Youth Allow.
Low-ICSEA / total
Avg ICSEA
Indig. %
Lockyer Valley
4,560
2,135
1,740
225
1 / 26
957
12.2%
Mareeba
2,465
975
1,690
245
5 / 14
937
27.1%
Somerset
2,730
1,540
1,110
125
2 / 19
950
14.0%
Southern Downs
3,894
2,045
1,690
210
4 / 35
951
13.9%
Tablelands
2,835
1,230
1,465
160
4 / 17
938
23.7%
Douglas
1,334
535
705
70
1 / 8
957
17.5%
Scenic Rim
4,706
1,830
1,655
180
0 / 29
993
7.8%
Toowoomba
18,909
7,760
6,525
1,190
8 / 88
982
12.9%
Ipswich
26,119
10,815
10,570
1,845
9 / 80
977
13.2%
Brisbane
137,609
29,875
32,335
2,990
6 / 318
1078
5.1%
Cairns
18,241
5,750
8,175
1,155
13 / 51
964
22.9%
Gold Coast
69,273
17,070
18,820
1,700
0 / 110
1037
5.0%
Read horizontally: each LGA's welfare load + school-disadvantage profile + Indigenous share. ICSEA: ACARA Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage; 1000 is the national mean. Schools below 970 carry meaningful disadvantage; cells highlighted in red. Five-or-more low-ICSEA schools in an LGA also flagged. Source: lga_cross_system_stats · DSS Demographics 2024 + ACARA ICSEA + ABS ERP.
VOLUME 3
The Money, and the gaps in support
QLD already supervises ~860 young people in their communities every day, 2.9× the number locked up. Community-based work isn't theoretical; it's the largest part of how QLD already runs the system. The question this volume answers is why the dollars don't follow the supervision, and where the gaps in support sit.
§7.5 · THE SUPPORT GAP
What “not being supported” looks like in five numbers
The detention-vs-community ratio is the headline. The gaps inside the community line are the deeper story. Five signals make the support deficit concrete, each is sourced live below from a different part of the dataset.
89%
on remand without conviction
~264 of ~296 children in detention each night, locked up while waiting for court, no community plan.
0
grants tagged mental-health or AOD
QLD justice-funding rows tagged mental-health or AOD, out of thousands. AIHW reports high MH/AOD comorbidity in the cohort. The funding stream doesn't name the issue.
5
effective programs unfunded
ALMA-listed QLD interventions graded “Proven” or “Effective” with no traceable funding link. They run; they work; they don't scale.
100% → 25%
ACCO retention · YoY
ACCOs delivering YJ work in 2017-18→2018-19 vs still funded in 2024-25→2025-26. Children losing their providers mid-system.
12%
ACCO funding share
For ~63% First Nations share of children in custody. The mismatch is the cleanest single signal of who's underfunded relative to need.
Volume 3 cites two spend figures intentionally. Cumulative dataset spend ($1.88B detention / $1.49B community) covers every QLD justice line item in justice_funding across the indexed window (2008-26). Current-year recurrent ($298M detention (2024-25)) is the latest single year from ROGS Section 17. Same direction of travel; different denominators. The 1.26:1 ratio above is from the cumulative window.
§8
Detention vs community, the structural ratio
From the QLD state-budget Youth Justice expenditure lines, queried live from justice_funding. $1.88B detention vs $1.49B community-based vs $101.4M group conferencing. Ratio: 1.26:1 detention to community.
* Partial-coverage years (FY13–15 missing source rows; FY25–26 in progress) are shown at 40% opacity. Treat their bar heights as a floor, not a real budget movement.
§9
Where the community $1.49B actually goes
Top 15 QLD recipients of youth-justice-tagged grants (excluding state department line items) with at least one grant since FY22. National NGOs hold the largest contracts. Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations are funded, but at smaller dollar amounts (see §10). Recipients with no grants since FY22 appear in the historical section below.
Youth Housing and Reintegration Service Including After Care Service (Inala)
$10.4M
9
2023-24
—
Save The Children Australia
$9.4M
11
2025-26
—
Youth Housing and Reintegration Service including After Care Service (Townsville)
$8.9M
9
2023-24
—
Youth Housing and Reintegration Service including After Care Service (Toowoomba)
$7.9M
9
2023-24
—
Youth Housing and Reintegration Service including After Care Service (Rockhampton)
$7.8M
9
2023-24
—
Historical (pre-FY22) recipients14 recipients · last grant before 2021-22▼ expand
Recipient
Total
Grants
Last grant FY
Lifeline Community Care
$30.1M
3
2010-11
Relationships Australia (Qld)
$25.5M
4
2011-12
Mission Australia
$20.1M
6
2016-17
UnitingCare Community
$12.7M
1
2011-12
Youth and Family Service (Logan City)
$11.4M
4
2011-12
Australian Red Cross Society
$10.8M
4
2011-12
Wesley Mission Brisbane
$9.4M
4
2011-12
Palm Island Community Company
$8.7M
4
2011-12
Abused Child Trust
$8.7M
3
2010-11
Anglicare North Queensland
$8.4M
4
2011-12
ACT for Kids
$8.2M
2
2011-12
Centacare Townsville
$8.2M
4
2011-12
South Burnett CTC
$7.7M
4
2011-12
Micah Projects
$7.7M
4
2011-12
§9.5 · PROGRAMMES REGISTRY
What was announced, and what's actually locked in
19 major QLD youth-justice initiatives, each laid out as a circuit diagram: Announcement → Bill → $ Funded → Delivery → Circuit breaker. Where a node is missing, the gap is the data: an announcement without a bill is rhetoric; a bill without a funded program is paper; a funded program without an announcement is invisible. Each row ends with the explicit Circuit breaker, the leverage point that would change the trajectory.
How to read this
Each card maps an announced initiative through five questions: (1) what was said publicly, (2) was a bill passed, (3) is there money flowing, (4) what's the delivery status, (5) what would unblock or break the pattern. The fifth question is where the work is, for boards, funders, journalists, and sector peaks.
custody-directioncommunity-directionmixed9 custody9 community8 have bills7 matched to funding stream15 have public announcement
#1CUSTODYMaking Queensland Safer Bill 2024, "Adult Crime, Adult Time" Act⚖ Bill PASSED
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Removed "detention as last resort" principle from Youth Justice Act. 13 listed offences carry adult sentencing exposure for children. UN CRC chair Ann Skelton called it "flagrant disregard of children's rights".
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Reinstate "detention as last resort." A custody-expanding Bill that passes without a parallel community-services appropriation in the same package locks in a one-way ratchet. The legislative pattern itself is the circuit, break it by requiring matching community capacity in every YJ Bill.
#2CUSTODY"Adult Crime, Adult Time" expansion 2025⚖ Bill PASSED
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Added ~20 further offences to the adult-sentencing list including arson, attempted murder, torture, rape. UN Special Rapporteurs wrote to Australian authorities expressing concern.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
External standard: UN Special Rapporteurs and the National Children's Commissioner have written publicly. The legislative direction is heading away from international child-rights compliance. The circuit-breaker is a federal Treaty / National Children's Commissioner finding that names QLD's legislative trajectory non-compliant, not a state-level negotiation.
#3CUSTODYExpanding Adult Crime, Adult Time + Drugs Bill 2026⚖ Bill PASSED
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Most-recent expansion. Three components: more adult-time offences, drug penalties, anti-social behaviour. Greens (Berkman) opposed.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
A second LNP MP, a coronial finding, or a public-service walkout. The legislative floor of opposition voices is one Greens vote (Berkman). For this trajectory to break, opposition needs to come from inside the LNP party room, usually triggered by a coronial event or a federal compliance finding.
#4CUSTODYStronger youth bail monitoring⚖ Bill PASSED
Announcement
10 Dec 2025
Stronger youth bail monitoring laws to make Queensland safer
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Two related bills passed within 60 days. Electronic monitoring expanded to Toowoomba, Mt Isa, Cairns. Police no longer required to consider alternatives to arrest for breaches. Predictable knock-on: more children on remand, more watchhouse-as-overflow.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Bail-support funding indexed to the bail-tightening population. Tightening bail without scaling community-bed capacity moves children from community to remand. The fix is a hard appropriation rule: every additional child on monitored bail = N hours of paid wraparound + 1 family-conferencing slot.
#5CUSTODYYouth Justice Monitoring Devices Act⚖ Bill PASSED
Announcement
20 Feb 2025
Youth bail monitoring devices to restore community safety
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Companion to the Electronic Monitoring Bill. Operational rollout via DYJ + monitoring-device contractor.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Independent evaluation of monitoring outcomes. Devices are procurement; "does it reduce reoffending" is unresearched in QLD's rollout. The fix is a sunset clause requiring published evaluation data before any further roll-out is funded.
#6MIXEDCastle Law Amendment Bill 2026⌛ Bill before parliament
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
KAP private bill on home-defence. Surfaces in YJ debate by association rather than direct YJ effect.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Not a YJ-leverage point. Listed for transparency about what surfaces in YJ debate by association.
#7CUSTODYWacol Youth Remand Centre✓ opened · operating
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
$250M+ build · ~$150M ops first 3 years
What this actually does · status notes
76 beds, remand-only. Opened early 2025 under Crisafulli LNP. Reduces watchhouse overflow but adds detention capacity rather than community alternatives.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Already built. The leverage now is operational: how the beds are used (remand vs sentenced), what wraparound services are colocated, whether ACCO programs are commissioned to deliver inside. Each opened bed without an ACCO partnership is a 30-year lock-in.
#8CUSTODYWoodford Youth Detention Centre🏗 under construction
Announcement
01 Feb 2024
Woodford Youth Detention Centre construction begins
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Up to $627.61M reported (industry tracker)
What this actually does · status notes
80 beds, north of Brisbane. BESIX Watpac (QLD) lead contractor. Completion target 2026. Project continues under Crisafulli LNP.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
A capital-budget freeze before commissioning. Operational appropriation is decided in the Budget that turns construction into operations, typically 12 months pre-opening. That window is the public-finance leverage point.
#9CUSTODYCairns Youth Detention Centre⚠ announced, no bill, no funding visible
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
TBD
What this actually does · status notes
40 beds, Far North Queensland. Site selection through 2024. Forecast operational 2027. With Woodford + Wacol = +120 beds added to QLD detention capacity.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Pre-construction. The most leverageable item in this registry. Cancel the build, redirect ~$200M to FNQ ACCO + community-bed capacity, and the regional disengagement-pipeline (§7 hotspots: Mareeba, Tablelands, Cairns 13 low-ICSEA schools) gets the closest thing to a place-based justice-reinvestment allocation in QLD's history.
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Circuit Breaker Sentencing in justice_funding ($20M FY25-26 · $80M over 4 yrs to DYJ)
What this actually does · status notes
Court-ordered intensive youth rehabilitation as alternative to detention. Two remote facilities (North and South QLD), capacity up to 60 youth offenders. Delivery commencing 2026. The largest single named "alternative to detention" appropriation in the registry, but with a sentencing-court gateway and remote-facility delivery model, sits between custody and community.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Where it gets delivered. Remote-facility models (i.e., bush camps) have a mixed evidence base. ACCO governance + local-area culturally-grounded design is the difference between this becoming a real alternative to detention and becoming a softer-skinned custodial line. The $80M is the right scale; the delivery design is the unresolved leverage point.
No public announcement located. Likely a recurrent contracting line, not a launched initiative.
Bill / Legislation
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Tribe of Mentors - Circuit Breaker Project ($142K to Adapt Mentorship, FY22-23)
What this actually does · status notes
Intensive 30-week immediate response for re-offending young people. Includes 7-month cultural project providing cultural mentoring and connection to First Nations community. Funded program in justice_funding, small but explicitly culturally-grounded.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Scale + duration. $142K for 30-week intensive cultural mentoring is one cohort. The fix is multi-year contracting and geographic expansion, this is exactly the kind of program §17 (unfunded effective programs) is asking the system to scale.
#12COMMUNITYTownsville Youth Step Up Step Down (mental health)✓ announced + funding stream matched
Announcement
04 Feb 2026
New Townsville Youth Step Up Step Down facility site confirmed
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Mental Health Levy (hypothecated), separate funding stream from Youth Justice budget
What this actually does · status notes
Short-stay residential MH beds, intermediate between community and inpatient. Funded through MH levy, NOT Youth Justice budget, invisible from a justice-funding search. The most-tangible preventive announcement of the past 12 months. Site selected; build timeline TBD.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Cross-stream tagging. The fix is administrative: every MH-levy / NDIS / Health appropriation that serves YJ-cohort youth gets a cross-tag so it surfaces from a justice-funding search. Until that tagging exists, "no MH funding for YJ youth" remains the apparent answer to anyone querying the justice stream, even when the funding exists.
#13COMMUNITYKickstart Early Intervention, multi-region rollout✓ announced + funding stream matched
Announcement
01 Apr 2026
Kickstarting new early intervention programs to restore safety to Wide Bay
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Kickstarter Grants line in justice_funding ($3.8M, 12 recipients)
What this actually does · status notes
Branded as "Kickstart" / "Kickstarter Grants" across Brisbane (Mar 2026), Toowoomba (Mar 2026), Cairns (Jan 2026), Wide Bay (Apr 2026), Far North QLD, Moreton Bay, Central QLD, Wide Bay-Burnett. Multiple announcements over 6 months. ~$3.8M total funded across 12 recipients in dataset.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Scale. $3.8M against $1.88B detention is symbolic. The fix is a 100× expansion (~$380M) and a multi-year contracting cycle so providers can hire and retain staff. At current scale, Kickstart is a press-release vehicle, not a system-shift program.
#14COMMUNITYBail Support Service / Bail Support Program▶ operational · funded + delivering
Announcement
No public announcement located. Likely a recurrent contracting line, not a launched initiative.
Bill / Legislation
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Bail Support Service ($16.7M / 26 recipients) + Bail Support Program ($10.7M / 15 recipients)
What this actually does · status notes
Long-running line, pre-dates current government. Continues under contract. Tightening of bail laws (above) increases the population this program is meant to support without proportionate funding increase.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Multi-year contracts. ACCOs and small community providers can't scale on 12-month contract cycles. The fix: minimum 4-year contracts for all bail-support providers, with cost-of-living indexation, so staffing decisions can be made beyond a single budget cycle.
#15COMMUNITYYoung Offender Support Service▶ operational · funded + delivering
Announcement
No public announcement located. Likely a recurrent contracting line, not a launched initiative.
Bill / Legislation
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Young Offender Support Service ($24.2M / 43 recipients) in justice_funding
What this actually does · status notes
Recurrent community-supervision support. 43 funded recipients across 2014-15 to 2024-25.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
ACCO retention (§10), provider continuity has fallen from 100% to ~25%. The fix is a procurement reform: lengthen contracts, prefer ACCO-led delivery, and protect retention as a measured KPI alongside the spend.
#16COMMUNITYYouth Justice Family Led Decision Making trial▶ operational · funded + delivering
Announcement
No public announcement located. Likely a recurrent contracting line, not a launched initiative.
Bill / Legislation
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
Family Led Decision Making trial ($2.0M / 5 recipients)
What this actually does · status notes
Aligns with "Youth Justice family-led decision making" intervention in ALMA, graded Effective. Funded but not scaled; one of the smaller programs in the registry.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Geographic scaling. The trial is real and the evidence in ALMA grades it Effective. The fix is to scale from 5 recipients to every QLD region with hotspot LGAs (§4), particularly Lockyer Valley, Mareeba, Tablelands, Cairns. The evidence is in. The capital is the constraint.
#17COMMUNITYYouth Criminal Rehabilitation Programs (Wide Bay-Burnett, SE QLD)⚠ announced, no bill, no funding visible
Announcement
05 Dec 2025
New youth criminal rehabilitation program making Wide Bay-Burnett safer
No bill, administrative / appropriation / facility / funded-program initiative.
$ Funded / Delivery
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Multiple regional rehabilitation announcements (Wide Bay-Burnett 5 Dec 2025, SE QLD 20 Nov 2025). No matched line in justice_funding for these specific announcements yet, possibly delivered via existing community-services contracts.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Disclosure. Either (a) the appropriation exists under a generic line ("Social Services" / "Young People") and needs to be tagged, or (b) the announcement was unfunded press. A FOI on Treasury Cabinet submissions for these specific announcements would resolve the ambiguity.
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Removed institutional architecture (First Nations Treaty Institute + Truth-telling Inquiry) that explicitly addressed YJ over-representation. QAIHC and Indigenous health peaks publicly opposed. No replacement architecture announced.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
Federal action or state-government turnover. The repeal happened on the LNP's first sitting day; reversal at state level requires the same political moment in the other direction. Federally, the Voice / Treaty / Truth conversation continues, federal architecture would partially fill the gap.
#19CUSTODYQLD Human Rights Act override (2nd time)⚖ Bill PASSED
No matched funding line in justice_funding. Either: not yet costed, funded via a separate department (Health / NDIS / Education), or sentencing/legislative change with no direct $ vehicle.
What this actually does · status notes
Overrode QLD HR Act for the second time; explicitly authorised holding children in adult watchhouses. Originally framed as temporary until 31 Dec 2026.
⚡ Circuit breaker · what would change this
The 31 December 2026 sunset. The override was framed as temporary. Whether it expires, is renewed, or is made permanent is the single most-leveragable structural decision in this registry. Public pressure between now and end-2026 is the window. Once permanent, the architecture loses meaningful HR-Act protection for children.
Reading the patterns: a row with a red Bill PASSED badge and no matched funding line is custody-expansion law without parallel community investment, a one-way ratchet. A row with announcement + funding match but no bill is a community program running on appropriation, vulnerable to defunding without legislative friction. A row with announced, no bill, no funding visible is rhetoric until proven otherwise. Limits: 19 major initiatives curated. Pair this registry with the per-recipient drill-downs (Detail → on each row of the §9 table) to see who's actually delivering each funded line.
§10
The ACCO funding gap, 12% of dollars for the majority First Nations in-custody cohort
Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations consistently outperform mainstream NGOs in retention and outcomes for First Nations young people. The dollar share doesn't reflect this. Closing the Gap target 11 commits to addressing it.
Community Controlled (ACCOs)
12%
$121.6M across 135 organisations
Avg per recipient: $900K
Other service providers
88%
$894.6M across 1,130 organisations
Avg per recipient: $792K
§11
Foundation landscape, billions in adjacent giving, none anchored to QLD YJ
The 12 largest Australian foundations whose stated thematic focus includes justice / youth / children / First Nations / disability / mental health. Annual giving listed; most are not anchored specifically to QLD youth-justice work.
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation
$51.4M
health, indigenous, community
§12
Federal procurement, Austender contracts to YJ-relevant suppliers
Top 12 federal Austender suppliers with names matching common YJ / community-services keywords (Mission Australia, Anglicare, Uniting, PCYC, Halikos, Liquidlogic, Save the Children).
Supplier
Total
Contracts
Anglicare NSW South NSW West and ACT
$421.8M
5
Mission Australia
$400.6M
101
The Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust (NSW) as delegated through to Uniting (NSW.ACT)
$362.6M
22
Halikos Pty Ltd
$174.9M
11
save the children australia
$169.9M
24
Uniting (NSW.ACT)
$128.5M
20
Anglican Community Services T/A Anglicare
$119.2M
8
Anglicare Tasmania
$100.0M
1
Anglicare
$88.6M
6
Save the Children
$31.8M
4
The Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust (NSW) on behalf of Uniting (NSW.ACT)
$29.8M
12
ANGLICARE VICTORIA
$27.6M
4
VOLUME 4
The Network
Multi-system providers, director board interlocks, political donations from contractors. Who's connected to whom, and what that does to accountability.
§13
The multi-system providers, orgs operating across 3+ sectors
QLD providers with funding flows tagged across at least 3 of: youth-justice, child-protection, disability, NDIS, family services, Indigenous services, mental health, homelessness, AOD, family violence. These are de-facto integrated service hubs, fragmented across siloed funding mechanisms.
People holding 5+ board / advisory positions across charities or Indigenous corporations connected to justice funding. The federation's shadow network: governance, advocacy, and funding all run through a small cohort. Read the $ figures as network-cumulative, not per-person: if two listed directors sit on the same board, both rows include that board's funding total, so the same dollars appear against multiple people. The point of the table is the overlap, not an individual exposure.
Political donations by orgs that hold QLD YJ funding
Cross-reference: QLD youth-justice-funded recipients (by ABN) appear in the federal political-donations register. These donations may relate to any of the donor org's activities, not specifically to youth-justice work. Read as a structural-overlap signal, not as a YJ-attributable transfer.
No political donations on the federal register from ABN-matched QLD youth-justice grant recipients. (Note: state-level donation registers and individual-director donations are not in this dataset.)
VOLUME 5
The Evidence
What works, what's funded, what's not. The Australian Living Map of Alternatives (ALMA) catalogues evaluated programs; we cross-reference them against funding flows.
§16
The ALMA evidence base
The Australian Living Map of Alternatives (ALMA), a civil-society register of community-endorsed and evaluated diversion / wraparound / justice-reinvestment / therapeutic / community-led programs. National counts by type, and the top 16 QLD-relevant interventions ranked by evidence + portfolio score.
Methodology: Evidence levels are self-attributed by ALMA submitters at registration time, not independently graded by CivicGraph. “Proven” / “Effective” / “Promising” reflect the program's own claim about its evaluation status, read as a starting point, not a verdict.
Interventions by type (national)
Wraparound Support179
Diversion83
Community-Led78
Prevention66
Justice Reinvestment57
Cultural Connection41
Therapeutic33
Education/Employment21
Early Intervention15
Family Strengthening8
§17
The unfunded effective programs
ALMA-listed programs at "Proven" or "Promising" evidence levels that have NO funding link in CivicGraph. These exist; they work; they're not being scaled.
Six landmark inquiries shape what's known about youth-justice failures in Australia. QLD has not had a major youth-detention royal commission of its own; it inherits the lessons.
227 recommendations · most unimplemented at scale
NT Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children (2017)
Don Dale tear-gassing footage triggered the inquiry. NT government accepted most recommendations in principle; on-the-ground implementation remains partial nearly a decade on.
339 recommendations
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991)
Implementation lagging across all jurisdictions; deaths in custody continue.
35 recommendations
ALRC Pathways to Justice (2017)
Indigenous over-representation reform agenda; partial implementation at federal level.
54 recommendations
Bringing Them Home (1997)
Stolen Generations inquiry, basis for ongoing reparations work.
Coronial inquiry
Cleveland Detention Inquest (QLD, ongoing)
Inquest into death in QLD detention; recommendations pending.
Geography matters. The system fails specific places repeatedly: Townsville, Logan, Mount Isa, Cherbourg. The hotspots aren't random.
§19
Place case studies, top 4 QLD LGAs by pipeline-intensity score
The §4 table ranks the top 15 QLD LGAs by pipeline-intensity score. Below: a fact card per LGA showing the cross-system context.
QLD LGA
Lockyer Valley
Population
43,847
Indigenous %
12.2%
Pipeline intensity
70.0
NDIS youth
1,366
JobSeeker
1,740
Funding tracked
$66.6M
QLD LGA
Mareeba
Population
23,702
Indigenous %
27.1%
Pipeline intensity
49.2
NDIS youth
599
JobSeeker
1,690
Funding tracked
$181.6M
QLD LGA
Somerset
Population
26,251
Indigenous %
14.0%
Pipeline intensity
49.2
NDIS youth
886
JobSeeker
1,110
Funding tracked
$35.0M
QLD LGA
Southern Downs
Population
37,444
Indigenous %
13.9%
Pipeline intensity
49.2
NDIS youth
1,318
JobSeeker
1,690
Funding tracked
$37.2M
§20
QLD LGAs ranked by pipeline-intensity score
The hotspot pattern is geographic. Top 15 QLD LGAs ranked by the composite pipeline-intensity score (welfare-recipient density + school disadvantage + Indigenous-population share), with funding tracked through CivicGraph's dataset shown as the bar magnitude. Per-LGA youth-offender rates aren't yet sourced into this dataset.
Lockyer Valleypipeline intensity 70.0 · $66.6M
Mareebapipeline intensity 49.2 · $181.6M
Somersetpipeline intensity 49.2 · $35.0M
Southern Downspipeline intensity 49.2 · $37.2M
Tablelandspipeline intensity 43.1 · $130.4M
Douglaspipeline intensity 43.1 · $94.6M
Scenic Rimpipeline intensity 41.5 · $202.3M
Toowoombapipeline intensity 36.9 · $339.0M
Ipswichpipeline intensity 30.8 · $184.2M
Brisbanepipeline intensity 25.5 · $17.04B
Cairnspipeline intensity 24.6 · $957.0M
Gold Coastpipeline intensity 18.5 · $1.40B
Goondiwindipipeline intensity 18.5 · $31.4M
Red bars indicate LGAs with no tracked funding for community-based alternatives in CivicGraph's dataset.
§21
Justice reinvestment, the Bourke benchmark
Bourke (NSW) is Australia's longest-running place-based justice-reinvestment site. Outcomes are evaluated and published. QLD has no operational equivalent at scale; the model is replicable but unfunded for QLD hotspots.
Maranguka Justice Reinvestment · Bourke NSW
23% drop in family-violence incidents (2017 baseline year)
· 31% increase in Year 12 retention
· $3.1M gross impact estimated in the evaluation year, KPMG analysis
Live QLD ministerial statements scraped daily from statements.qld.gov.au, filtered to youth-justice keywords and tagged by direction-of-travel.
§22 · EVERY ANNOUNCED COMMUNITY PROGRAM · LAST 3 YEARS
All 23 QLD ministerial announcements about youth community programs
Every QLD ministerial statement on youth community programs, Circuit Breaker Sentencing · Kickstart Early Intervention · Step Up Step Down · Career Pathways · youth criminal rehabilitation · family-led decision making · diversion · prevention, pulled live from civic_ministerial_statements. Sorted newest first. Click any card for the full statement at statements.qld.gov.au. Pair with §9.5 Programmes Registry for the funded-program match per announcement.
Laura Gerber · Minister for Youth Justice and Victim Support Laura Gerber s
⚠ Funded · separate stream
→ Kickstarter Grants line in justice_funding ($3.8M, 12 recipients)
Source: civic_ministerial_statements · 36-month window · keyword-matched to community-program / early-intervention / wraparound / diversion / Circuit Breaker / Step Up Step Down / Kickstart / family-led / youth justice. Why this matters: 0 grants in justice_funding are tagged mental-health or AOD, but 23 announcements above mention these supports. The mismatch tells you announced services for justice-system youth move through Health / NDIS / Education funding doors, not through Youth Justice. The justice stream looks empty even when the support exists.
§23 · LIVE
What QLD ministers are saying about youth justice
The 12 most-recent statements from statements.qld.gov.au. Each is auto-tagged by direction-of-travel: punitive (custody-expanding), preventive (community-investing), mixed. Read horizontally for the system's real direction.
Source: civic_ministerial_statements via the scrape-ministerial-statements agent. Classifier reads headlines, e.g. “Adult Crime, Adult Time” → punitive; “early intervention” → preventive. Click a card to read the full statement on statements.qld.gov.au.
§23.1 · CURATED LEGISLATION
Structural policy backdrop
The major QLD legislative and treaty-framework moves over 2023–2024 that frame every announcement above. These are curated reference items linked to the underlying QLD legislation register.
16 Mar 2023
punitive
Strengthening Community Safety Act 2023, first override of QLD Human Rights Act
Reinstated the breach-of-bail offence for children. Overrode Queensland's own Human Rights Act 2019, the first such override since the Act commenced. Set the precedent for subsequent youth-justice legislation overriding rights protections.
Path to Treaty Act 2023, established Truth-telling and Treaty Body
Act No. 12 of 2023, passed 10 May 2023. Established the First Nations Treaty Institute and a Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry, institutional architecture for addressing the systemic conditions (including youth-justice over-representation) that a treaty / truth process is intended to confront.
Children-in-adult-watchhouses Act, second HR Act override
Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Offender Prohibition Order) and Other Legislation Amendment Act. Overrode QLD HR Act for the second time; explicitly authorised holding children in adult watchhouses. Then-Police Minister Mark Ryan described as a temporary measure until 31 December 2026.
Making Queensland Safer Act 2024, "adult crime, adult time"
Act No. 54 of 2024, assented 13 December 2024. Removed the "detention as a last resort" principle from the Youth Justice Act. Children charged with 13 listed offences (incl. murder, manslaughter, robbery, dangerous operation of a vehicle) face the same maximum, mandatory and minimum penalties as adults. Restorative justice removed as a sentencing option for those offences. UN CRC chair Ann Skelton called it "flagrant disregard of children's rights".
Path to Treaty Act repealed, first sitting day of new government
Crisafulli LNP Government repealed the Path to Treaty Act on its first day of sitting. Repeal bundled into a Bill amending the Brisbane Olympic Games Act. QAIHC and Indigenous health peak bodies publicly opposed. Removed the institutional treaty/truth framework that explicitly addressed YJ over-representation.
Bail Act amendments, wider presumption-against-bail list
Police no longer required to consider alternatives to arrest for bail-condition breaches by children. Presumption-against-bail expanded: unlawful use of motor vehicle (aggravated), burglary, entering premises to commit indictable offences. Electronic monitoring of high-risk youth on bail expanded to Toowoomba, Mt Isa and Cairns. More children on remand for longer.
Adult Crime Adult Time Amendment Bill 2025, proposed expansion to ~33 offences
Sought to expand the adult-crime-adult-time list by ~20 further offences including arson, attempted murder, torture, rape, attempted rape, attempted robbery and trafficking in dangerous drugs. UN Special Rapporteurs Alice Jill Edwards (torture) and Albert K. Barume (Indigenous peoples) wrote to Australian authorities expressing concern.
What independent inspectors and oversight bodies have found about the QLD youth-justice operation. Sourced from the Inspector of Detention Services, the Australian Human Rights Commission, and human-rights research bodies. Each entry links to the originating report.
Important clarification
The high-profile Cleveland Dodd coronial inquest (16-year-old Yamatji boy who died in October 2023) is a Western Australian case at Unit 18, Casuarina Prison, not QLD's Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville. Public reporting often conflates the two given the shared name. We do not surface the Dodd inquest in this QLD report. WA Coroner's findings (Dec 2025) called for Unit 18 to close as a matter of urgency.
27 Aug 2024
QLD Ombudsman / Inspector of Detention Services
Cleveland Youth Detention Centre Inspection Report, separation due to staff shortages
Inspector Anthony Reilly tabled findings of chronic staff shortages causing children to be locked alone in their rooms. On one inspection day, 40% of Cleveland's 96 inmates were held in bare cells. Average separation length in 2022–23 was 8 hrs 36 min, reduced to 4 hrs 24 min by mid-2024. 15 recommendations.
Cairns and Murgon Watch-Houses Inspection Report, focus on detention of children
Inspection of Cairns and Murgon watch-houses with specific focus on the detention of children. Documented operational and welfare issues at both regional sites, directly relevant to the watchhouse-as-overflow pattern in Volume 1.
Australian Human Rights Commission · Amnesty International
Children in Brisbane City Watchhouse, 89 children, isolation incidents
ABC Four Corners + Amnesty International documented 89 children held in the Brisbane City Watchhouse at one point in May 2019. Reported incidents included children losing fingers in cell doors and one young person held in isolation for 23 days. Triggered international and federal-level scrutiny.
National Children's Commissioner, public criticism of QLD reforms
The National Children's Commissioner publicly criticised QLD's 2024 youth-justice reforms as a breach of Australia's international child-rights obligations.
The 8 most-recent QLD Coroners Court findings flagged as in-custody or youth-justice-relevant by keyword classifier. Scraped via Playwright from coronerscourt.qld.gov.au/findings-upcoming-inquests/search-findings. Each card links to the originating PDF; deceased-identifier fields respect QLD coronial-suppression rules and may be initials only.
Source: qld_coroners_findings populated by scrape-qld-coroners agent. Title parsing is best-effort from page DOM; metadata extraction (age, finding date, coroner, recommendations) regex-derived from PDF text via Jina Reader. Verify against coronerscourt.qld.gov.au before publication.
§24.5 · LIVE HANSARD
QLD Parliament, what MPs are actually saying
Most-recent youth-justice mentions in QLD Parliament Hansard, scraped from parliament.qld.gov.au. Each card shows the speaker, party, sitting date, and the opening of their contribution. Filter: keyword match in body_text on youth justice / adult crime / detention / watchhouse / bail / Making Queensland Safer.
Speeches by party · last 12 months
LNP19 speeches
ALP6 speeches
KAP5 speeches
Ind2 speeches
Grn1 speeches
Verify before citing
Speaker names below are parsed from QLD Parliament Hansard PDFs and may render as surname only or partial titles. Snippets are the opening characters of a contribution, not necessarily a complete or self-contained quote. Always confirm against the official transcript at parliament.qld.gov.au before publication.
Source: civic_hansard table populated by scrape-qld-hansard agent. 10 most-recent youth-justice mentions shown; party-bar covers the last 12 months. Speaker-name parsing is best-effort from PDF text and may render as surnames only.
§24.6 · WHAT'S COMING NEXT
Currently before QLD Parliament
QLD bills introduced but not yet passed (or defeated / lapsed / withdrawn). Read for what's about to land before it makes it into §24.7's passed-legislation list. Includes adjacent legislation (criminal code, sentencing, dwelling-defence, etc.) that surfaces in YJ debate.
Source: parliament_bills WHERE status not in (PASSED, defeated, lapsed, withdrawn). Track here for early signal of what's about to be debated. Click through for Bill text + Explanatory Note + Statement of Compatibility.
§24.7 · LIVE QLD BILLS REGISTER · PASSED LEGISLATION
YJ-relevant bills · already-passed
Bills passed (or with amendment) since 2024, scraped via Playwright from the official QLD Parliament register. Each card opens to a curated drawer with key amendments + opposition voices + capital backing + outcome proxies. Read alongside §24.6 (active) for the full pipeline.
Cross-reference · Hansard mention volume
The same bill names extracted from civic_hansard.body_text via v_qld_yj_bills_active, how often each appeared in debate. Yellow rail = YJ-specific by name pattern.
Expanding Adult Crime, Adult Time and Taking a Strong Stance on Drugs and Anti-Social Behaviour Amendment Bill 2026
YJ-specific
9 hansard mentions7 distinct speakersparties: KAP · LNPlast mention: 2026-04-22
Education (General Provisions) Amendment Bill 2025
Bill names extracted by regex from PDF Hansard text, minor edge-case captures may include leading sentence fragments. Verify against the QLD Bills register at parliament.qld.gov.au before quoting. The proper bills-register scraper is queued, Hansard-derived list is a free interim cut.
§25 · ACCOUNTABILITY CHAIN
Promise → action → outcomes, does the chain hold?
For each major QLD policy promise we map the chain: the announcement (what was said), the bill (what was passed), the implementing department or contractor (who delivers), and the live outcomes data we can read against it (what changed). Where the chain breaks, where promise outpaces action, where action lands but outcomes don't move, or where the system pretends two contradictory promises can both be delivered, the gap is the story. Four chains, ordered roughly by the gap between announcement and outcome.
Capital backing: Wacol $250M+, Woodford up to $627.61M, Cairns 40 beds · §2
OUTCOMES
· Watchhouse children today: 8 (63% First Nations)
· CTG gap: +8.0/10K from trajectory (widening)
· ACCO funding share: 12% (unchanged)
· 8 live coronial findings flagged in-custody
Chain status: Promise made → bill passed (with amendment) → department resourced → outcome data lag (early; verify in 6–12 months). The legislation has been passed; the watchhouse and CTG-gap data has not yet shown the “safer Queensland” the announcements promised. The Apr-2026 amending Bill is too recent to read as outcomes; verify in 6, 12, 24 months as the data accumulates.
Chain 2 · Path to Treaty repeal
PROMISE
LNP election commitment to repeal Path to Treaty Act
28 Nov 2024 (first sitting day) · QAIHC publicly opposed
DELIVERED BY
Crisafulli LNP Government
No funding allocation (institutional removal of Treaty Body + Truth-telling Inquiry)
OUTCOMES
· ACCO funding share: 12% (unchanged)
· First Nations % of in-custody children: 63%
· CTG target 11 trajectory: widening
· No replacement institutional architecture announced
Chain status: Promise made → bill passed (bundled) → institutional architecture removed → no replacement. The truth-telling and treaty-process framework that explicitly addressed YJ over-representation has been removed; the structural conditions it was designed to address are unchanged in the data.
Chain 3 · “New Townsville Youth Step Up Step Down facility” (preventive)
PROMISE
“New Townsville Youth Step Up Step Down facility site confirmed”
Levy hypothecated to youth mental health services. No specific bill, administrative + capital appropriation.
DELIVERED BY
QLD Department of Health
Step Up Step Down model: short-stay residential mental-health beds, intermediate between community and inpatient. Townsville site selected; build timeline tbd.
· Read against §6 mental-health blind spot for whether the system funds-what-it-names
Chain status: The most-tangible preventive announcement of the past 12 months. Funded through the mental-health levy (not the YJ budget line). Builds the kind of community capacity §6 + §16 says is missing, but at one site, against state-wide demand patterns. Useful proof-of-concept; insufficient at scale relative to capital direction in §2 ($1B+ to detention beds). Whether it generalises is the test.
Chain 4 · “Stronger youth bail monitoring”
PROMISE
“Stronger youth bail monitoring laws to make Queensland safer”
Roll-out expanded to Toowoomba, Mt Isa, Cairns regional areas. Police no longer required to consider alternatives to arrest for breaches.
OUTCOMES
· Children >2 days in watchhouse: 2 today (avg cell, no programs)
· Adults >7 days in watchhouse: 66 · longest 12d
· Detention occupancy: 76–92% across BYDC, Cleveland, West Moreton (overflow → watchhouses)
· Remand-as-default pattern: data point we're building (proxy = watchhouse-pop trend, §2)
Chain status: Promise made (twice within 60 days) → two separate Bills passed → infrastructure rolled out to regional centres → predictable knock-on effect: more children on remand, more watchhouse-as-overflow. The bail-monitoring program is the most-paired example in the dataset of a promise that does land structurally, but the “safer” outcome the announcements claimed is operating against the watchhouse-occupancy data above. Tightening bail without scaling community-bed capacity simply moves children from community to remand.
Multiple ministerial statements + capital appropriation
Construction underway 2024–2027 timeline
DELIVERED BY
QLD DYJ + BESIX Watpac (Woodford lead contractor)
$1B+ combined capital across the three facilities
OUTCOMES
· Wacol Remand: opened early 2025 (76 beds added)
· Woodford: targeting 2026 completion
· Cairns: targeting 2027 operational
· No equivalent community-services capital allocation in the same window
Chain status: Promise made → bills/appropriation passed → contractors engaged → capacity coming online on schedule. The capital pipeline is the most-delivered part of the QLD YJ promise stack. Whether the additional capacity drives the outcomes the announcements claimed (“safer Queensland”, lower offending) is the test that runs over the next 5 years.
Method: each chain anchors a high-profile QLD YJ policy promise and traces it through the live data we hold, ministerial statements (§23), bills register (§24.7), watchhouse occupancy (§1), CTG progress (§3), ACCO funding share (§10), capital backing (§2), and coronial outcomes (§24). Where outcome data is missing or moves the wrong way, the chain's “status” line surfaces it. We're building richer outcome ingestion (recidivism by year, detention bed-day cost, ACCO retention rates) for next iteration.
§25.5 · SYNTHESIS
The shape of the choice
Each new bed announcement is a structural commitment for 30+ years. Each new piece of bail-tightening legislation lengthens the average remand period. Each repealed prevention framework removes a counter-balancing institution. The cumulative direction of travel, combining the dataset numbers above (§3, §8, §10) with the policy moves in §23, is unambiguous: QLD is structurally expanding custody capacity faster than community capacity. The same dollars could have funded the operational scale-up of every “promising” ALMA intervention listed in §16, with evaluation budget left over.
Capacity direction
Expanding. Multiple new facilities announced; Wacol remand opened; existing centres still running near capacity.
Contracting. Path to Treaty repealed. ACCO funding share unchanged at 12%. $101.4M for group conferencing, the most-evidence-backed line.
CLOSING, Four structural moves
What would shift this
1. Reallocate $200M from detention to community
A $200M reallocation is roughly a 13% expansion of the $1.49B community-services line, enough to scale-up the most-promising ALMA interventions across the regional QLD network. Detention costs more per child than every alternative.
2. Triple the ACCO share
From 12% toward the in-custody share, the AIHW 2024-25 range puts First Nations representation at ~65–75%, so a target near that band, not a fixed multiplier of the current share. Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations consistently outperform mainstream NGOs on retention and outcomes for First Nations young people.
3. Resource evaluation alongside delivery
The reason most ALMA interventions sit at "promising" rather than "proven" isn't that programs don't work, it's that programs are funded to deliver, not to be evaluated. A small percentage of every grant going to monitoring closes the evidence gap within a budget cycle.
4. Stop overriding the QLD Human Rights Act
QLD has overridden its own HR Act twice in 18 months to expand custody powers over children (§23.1). Each Act passed under the current Government has expanded custody, none community capacity. Reversing that legislative direction is the precondition for moves 1–3 to land.
For Boards · Funders · Journalists · Sector Peers
What this means for you
If you fund youth-justice work in QLD
12% of dollars for the majority First Nations in-custody cohort (~65–75% across AIHW 2024-25 quarters). Frame your grants against this denominator. ACCOs deliver better outcomes; they don't get the dollars.
Evidence-vs-spend gap is real and quantifiable. $101.4M group conferencing, the most-evidence-backed early intervention in the budget, versus $1.88B for detention services.
$1B+ committed to detention capacity expansion (§2: Wacol $250M+ build + ~$150M ops first 3 yrs; Woodford up to $627.61M reported; Cairns TBD). Foundation giving is adjacent, not anchored, see §11.
If you sit on a board doing youth-justice work
Watchhouse data should sit on every QLD YJ board agenda. It's public, daily, and tells you who's in custody right now. Today: 8 children, 63% First Nations.
Audit your evidence-level disclosure. If your programs sit at "promising" or "untested", you need an evaluation strategy. Funders are starting to ask.
Map your funder concentration. Most QLD YJ NGOs run a single Justice department line item as their lifeline. Diversify before the cycle ends.
If you're a journalist
Live coronial findings (8 in-custody / YJ-flagged in §24). Pilkington 27 recommendations · Schafer prison-murder · Valera family-violence/suicide. PDFs link direct to the QLD Coroners Court source.
6 live YJ bills tracked from parliament.qld.gov.au with sponsor + party + status (§24.7). Pair with the watchhouse refresh and the live ministerial-statement feed for any contemporary story.
Director networks in §14 connect QLD YJ orgs to national NGO boards, advocacy peaks, and government advisory committees. The shadow network is small.
If you run advocacy / a sector peak
$1.88B detention vs $1.49B community is a campaign-grade statistic. Detention isn't cheaper; it's structurally larger.
First Nations children at 63% of in-custody kids is a Closing the Gap target-11 signal. It's daily-data, not annual.
16 ALMA-listed alternatives with QLD presence are real, evaluated, community-endorsed work. The "there's no alternative" framing doesn't hold.
Two ways to take this further
The same pipeline that produced this report runs for any sector or organisation in Australia: multicultural peak bodies, ACCOs, foundations, lobbyists, federal procurement, place-based investment. Tell us what hit and what missed. Anonymously if you like.
Partnerships we're looking for: foundations co-funding sector reports · ACCO + community-controlled orgs that want their own version of this · journalists on a story · sector peaks pitching system change · researchers using the underlying dataset.