A Historical Perspective on Juvenile Justice Reform in Queensland

Abstract

The Queensland government has recently implemented a substantial package of juvenile justice reforms designed to deal with “a generation of arrogant recidivist young offenders”. These reforms, which have sought to sharpen the blade of the criminal law and strengthen the power to enforce it, have been heavily and almost uniformly criticised by the profession, the judiciary, and the academy. This article places the reforms in a historical context to illustrate that not only do they make undesirable policy, but that each is a step backwards which together unravel centuries of gradually calculated reform to improve the state of human rights in juvenile criminal justice.

Keywords: criminal law, juvenile justice, Jarrod Bleijie, great leap backward