LNP youth curfew plan in north Queensland risks violence against Indigenous children

A Liberal National party plan to trial a youth curfew in Cairns and Townsville to stem crime has been denounced by justice advocates, who warn the move could encourage vigilantes to target Indigenous children after dark and breach international law.

LNP leader Deb Frecklington said her party would trial a curfew where children under 14 would be kept indoors after 8pm, with young people aged 15 to 17 inside by 10pm.

Opposition leader Frecklington made the announcement in Townsville, where she is targeting marginal seats ahead of the state election on 31 October.

The LNP’s controversial plan will amplify a perceived youth crime problem in Townsville, which experts have told Guardian Australia is overblown. Police have voiced concerns of vigilantism in Townsville.

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Frecklington told reporters on Wednesday that if the LNP was elected, young people caught by police breaking the curfew without a reasonable excuse would be taken to a community refuge for supervision.

Parents could be fined $250 every time one of their children was caught breaking the curfew.

“The youths are laughing in the face of the police officers, they are laughing in the face of the government because Labor is soft on crime,” the opposition leader said.

Prof Chris Cunneen, a criminologist at James Cook University, told Guardian Australia curfews were a “perennial election spinner” but there was little evidence to show they were effective.

“It’s a completely ridiculous way to think about crime prevention or community safety,” he said.

“If there’s concern about some young people out there, then there are other processes that don’t criminalise children that have been more effective, such as night patrols and street beats.

“This seems to start from the view that if young people are out, that they’re a problem.”

He said a curfew proposal would add to the polarisation in Townsville and Cairns that already existed and could encourage vigilantism which, he warned, would likely target young Aboriginal people.

There was a racial element to the proposal that needed to be acknowledged, Cunneen stressed, because some people didn’t like seeing young Aboriginal people on the streets “irrespective of whether they are misbehaving”.

“If anything shows that a political party is unfit to govern, it’s the way they can regurgitate these tired old stories,” he added.

Amnesty International Australia campaigner Joel Mackay said curfews “will only entrench cycles of disadvantage, poverty, poor health and racism” and could be in breach of international law.

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“Youth prisons will once again overflow. It will affect the most marginalised children in our communities who need support and only get more children trapped in the quicksand of our justice system,” Mackay said.

“The reality is that curfews do not work – the UN guidelines for the prevention of juvenile delinquency note that curfews ‘stigmatise, victimise and criminalise young people’.”

Mackay warned Australia could be in breach of international law if enacted, as the nation was a signatory to the convention on the rights of the child.

“The committee on the rights of the child and the UN world report on violence against children have all called for the abolition of status offences – such as curfews – to achieve equal treatment for children and adults.”

Deb Kilroy, chief executive of Sisters Inside and prison reform advocate, condemned the curfew proposal as “the poorest, most pathetic leadership of any leader of any persuasion I’ve seen”.

“It’s a law and order auction again, driven by the rightwingers who want to install fear in that community up there,” Kilroy said.

“We’re talking about children who are predominantly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids, children who are predominantly on protection orders. They’re wards of the state. So what are the LNP going to do, fine themselves for not looking after them?

“This will also call out the vigilantes, give them an excuse to go after every kid they see after dark. They’ll flog them. It gives the vigilantes a free licence.”

Prof Gracelyn Smallwood, a Townsville-based Indigenous rights campaigner, added to the chorus of criticism, saying curfews “have never ever worked”.

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There was a small minority of young people committing crime in Townsville, Smallwood said, but warned such a policy could ensnare the innocent as well as the guilty. “What about kids that are not committing a crime. Do they have to be off the streets as well?”

She said one blanket solution across all young people risked creating criminals out of children that were not part of the minority causing problems.

Shane Duffy, chief executive of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service in Queensland, said what was needed in communities like Townsville and Cairns were “services, not sentences”.

He said a curfew would pile more pressure on police and breach civil liberties. “This is purely about votes in marginal seats,” he told Guardian Australia.