Queensland's Premier David Crisafulli announced a new law this month. It would send young people to jail for breaking the rules of their bail if they commit serious crimes — with no option for a judge to let them off.

This is the third time in under two years that his government has toughened laws for young offenders. The first laws, in late 2024, brought mandatory jail sentences for murder. Then in May 2025 they added 20 more crimes. Now they're expanding again to cover young people who break bail by committing serious crimes.

The government says young people in Queensland commit too many crimes and break bail too often. That's the message Premier Crisafulli wants to send: breach bail, go to jail. ABC News reported the law would force judges to send young offenders to prison if they break bail conditions and commit serious crimes.

What People Who Work with Young Offenders Say

People who work in youth justice pushed back hard. Katherine Hayes runs the Youth Advocacy Centre. She says Queensland already has the toughest youth bail laws in Australia. The previous government made it very hard for young people to get bail and made it a crime to break bail conditions — even for children.

Hayes also pointed out that Queensland locks up more children than any other state. It puts more kids in jail than Victoria and New South Wales combined.

Debbie Kilroy, who runs Sisters Inside, was even stronger. She said the government had "declared war on children" and was building a youth justice system based on headlines, not evidence about what actually works.

Both critics accept that youth crime is a real problem people worry about. But they say adding more mandatory jail sentences won't make things better — it will just put more young people in prison.

How the New Law Would Work

The new rule is narrow. It only applies to young people who've already offended before and who commit serious crimes while they're out on bail. It's not about all bail breaks — just serious crimes by repeat offenders.

The government hasn't yet decided how long the jail sentences will be. That will be worked out when Parliament votes on the law before the end of 2026. They also haven't said which crimes count as "serious."

The government says people in Queensland are sick of repeat offenders. They want tougher action. But Queensland already has other laws that let judges consider everything a young person has done before when deciding on sentences. And bail is already hard to get, and breaking bail is already against the law for young people.

So a question sits here: what will this new law do that the existing laws don't already do?

The premier's team would say this: the old system lets judges make their own choice. A judge could still let a young person off. But a mandatory sentence takes away that choice. The judge has to send them to jail. That's the whole point.

But the critics make a bigger point. Queensland puts more children in prison than anywhere else in Australia. That's a fact that gets lost in political speeches but will matter when the real numbers come out. When the government finally says how long the jail sentences will be, that's when we'll really know how far this is going.