Exclusive: “It wasn’t on my New Year’s resolutions, I’ll tell you that.”
Harry* has been wearing an ankle bracelet for about seven months.
Harry said this ankle bracelet has helped keep him on track. Nine.com.au
The 17-year-old from Brisbane’s south doesn’t want to tell us what he did to earn the clunky jewellery, but says he’s getting attention for it.
“I get a lot of looks when I walk around, when I’m with my friends, I always notice someone’s always looking down at your ankle,” he said.
“That’s just kinda my fault for what I’ve done and that’s the consequences I’ve got to deal with.”
Nine.com.au met Harry when we rode along with one of Queensland’s Youth Co-Responder Teams (YCRT), which pair a youth justice worker with a police officer to check in on high-risk young people to prevent crime.
The YCRT program has been operating in some form since 2020 but was made permanent this year.
Teams run 24/7 statewide, running bail checks, issuing court reminders and connecting at-risk kids with community youth services.
Harry tells us his dealings with the team have been “all good” and that they look out for him, helping him charge up his electronic monitoring device, and make sure he’s home by curfew.
“They’ve helped take me home a few times if I’ve been stuck out somewhere and need a ride back home,” he said.
“I would say (before) I didn’t have the best image (of police) but I reckon now I can kinda see why, they’re just doing their job at the end of the day, and it’s up to your actions.
“I just did some dumb stuff and have to pay the cost for that.”
Harry told us he’s keen to stay out of trouble and maybe get a blue card so he can work with young people like himself.
We leave Harry with his support worker and team leader Brooke Sanders makes a call to the home of a young person who’s recently had his first run-in with police.
The boy’s dad answers the phone and tells Sanders they’ve already reached out to Headspace but would be open to hearing what other supports are available.
He seems grateful for the call and Sanders makes a note to check in again next week.
Team leader Brooke Sanders and Sergeant Belinda Goodsell make a call to the family of a child who had a run-in with police a few months ago. Nine
Later in the evening, before the team begins their bail compliance checks, we drop in at PCYC Carindale.
The team has recently started to engage some of the kids they support into PCYC’s Channelling Healthy Aggression Mentoring Project (CHAMP).
The program is a type of boxfit designed to teach basic health and fitness, discipline and respect.
“Really it’s a vehicle to establish relationships with those young people and become a mentor to them over time,” Acting Sergeant Tim Miller, the youth club manager at PCYC Carindale, explained.
“We’re very fortunate that we have that time unlike the frontline police who are going job to job, day in, day out – they’re our frontline heroes out there – we have that time to engage with families.
“It’s fascinating how much trust we do get to build.
“There’s a lot of pressures, whether it be social media pressures, online pressures, mental health challenges, all the things that you would hope that they had the comfort to raise with their parents but I guess in that sense because we are that slightly (more) removed it’s almost as like they’re not as embarrassed to raise some of those issues with us.”
Sergeant Tim Miller and youth co-responder team leader Brooke Sanders with a volunteer at the PCYC After Dark event. Nine
Sergeant Belinda Goodsell, who came to the Youth Co-Responder program from a plainclothes role, said she was able to build trust simply by following through on her word.
“I think we’re able to break down a lot of the barriers that they have previously had with police,” she said.
“I give that young person an opportunity to get to know me and obviously understand that we’re here in a different space than other times they may have engaged with police, and we’re here to support them.”
Sanders said there was usually common contributing factors that led to kids coming into contact with police and some were breaching bail simply because they didn’t understand their bail conditions, often due to learning disabilities.
“Engagement with antisocial peers is a very strong risk factor for a lot of our young people
“A lot of it is also intergenerational trauma, also drug and alcohol misuse.
“They’re not bad kids… (they’re) making wrong choices.”
So, is it working or not?
The government insists early intervention programs, along with its Adult Crime, Adult Time crackdown, are helping “turn the tide” on the youth crime crisis.
In Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Thursday, the number of victims in Queensland dropped to 277,411 in 2025, more than 12,000 less than the previous year.
According to the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office Crime Report Queensland 2024-25, released in April, the number of youth offenders had also dropped 16.7 per cent compared to 2023-24.
But fluctuations in crime statistics cannot be easily traced to any one program or initiative.
An independent evaluation of the YCRT program in 2024 found only 12 per cent of young people did not reoffend in the six months following their engagement with the program.
The report found the greatest reduction in reoffending was with serious repeat offenders with a 73 per cent reduction in young people who had 10 or more offences.
A screenshot from a TikTok video showing a car with bare rims, purportedly filmed by teens. TikTok
Specifically, it found it was contributing to reductions in break and enter, illegal use of a motor vehicle and theft.
These crimes are synonymous with the youth crime crisis, after tragedies like the death of Emma Lovell, who was stabbed when she confronted two intruders to her home in 2022, and Kate Leadbetter and Matthew Field, who were killed, along with their unborn child, in 2021 by a teenager driving a stolen car while under the influence of cannabis and alcohol.
Teens sneaking into a house and stealing a set of keys for a joyride even became a viral social media trend.
This screenshot taken from a TikTok video shows a car being driven at speed. The camera zooms out to show the BMW is being driven by a young man. TikTok
TikTok accounts show Brisbane teens glorifying car theft, dangerous driving, and antisocial behaviour, despite “post and boast” laws making it punishable by two years in prison.
Queensland’s Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber said both early intervention and strong laws and sentencing were required to tackle youth crime.
“We’re doing the next phase of adult crime, adult time which ensures that there are consequences for youth that breach their bail … but we’re not doing that in isolation,” she said.
“That is why we have (the Youth Co-Responder Team) that’s funded permanently with permanent police officers to ensure alongside that there is effective early intervention and rehabilitation to prevent as many young people as possible coming into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place.
Youth justice minister Laura Gerber said the state needed both early intervention programs and strong laws to tackle youth crime. Nine
“It is all about ensuring that youth that would otherwise perhaps have antisocial behaviour or be at risk of going down a life of crime, instead they’ve got a mentor and a person they can turn to that helps them get back on the right track.”
Beyond the statistics, Sanders told nine.com.au she’s seen the evidence, describing how an adult she supported as a child approached her at a community sporting event years later.
“Not a young person anymore, an adult, actually pulled me aside and said, ‘I have a full-time job now, yes I made some really silly mistakes but you pulled me aside, your team was so supportive.’
“Just to see that young people can turn it around and make something of themselves is amazing.”
*Name has been changed