Laws to deliver Premier David Crisafulli’s “breach bail, go to jail” crackdown will be introduced to Parliament on Thursday.
In a major move, alleged offenders who commit a serious crime while on bail will face a higher threshold to be let out on bail again.
Currently a person who is charged with a serious offence while on bail for a serious offence has to show a court why staying in jail isn’t justified.
Under the government’s proposal, a court should refuse bail unless they have a high degree of confidence the offender will not commit another serious offence while on bail.
It will be applied to youth and adult offenders facing any of the 47 adult crime, adult time offences.
Adults charged with a coercive control or child sexual offences will also have to prove they deserve bail.
Those who breach bail face a minimum 12 months’ prison under the new laws.
Critics argue the policy will put pressure on at-capacity detention centres and risks creating a new crime wave.
The laws will be introduced in Parliament on Thursday and be sent to a parliamentary committee for Queenslanders to have their say.
However Mr Crisafulli has indicated his government would not place significant weight on the comments of experts.
He called on everyday Queenslanders to lodge a submission, “not just the same Queenslanders who convinced those opposite (Labor) to weaken it 10 years ago”.
Mr Crisafulli said the legislation was one of the most significant packages of bail reform in the state’s history.
“These are important reforms the ministers have been working through for some time to deliver the nation-leading stronger bail laws that will restore safety,” he said.
The inclusion of coercive control as an offence captured under the new bail laws would make Queensland women safer, Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence Minister Amanda Camm said.
“The inclusion of coercive control under the strongest bail reforms in the country reinforces our resolve to improve the lives of Queensland women and children who, all too frequently and tragically, experience harm at the hands of others,” she said.
Police Minister Dan Purdie would not confirm whether he held the same view he expressed during a 2023 debate about bail laws, when he said youth detention centres were at capacity and police watch houses overrun by juveniles.
“As a frontline (child protection police) officer, we assumed that the government would have a plan for that because we were already getting turned away from youth detention facilities because they were at capacity,” he said at the time.
“The government did not have a plan for that.
“Not long after that we saw hundreds of children being held in maximum security watch houses, which are designed as holding cells for people to be kept in — adults preferably — for a few hours or a night or two.”
But on Wednesday Mr Purdie said: “You can’t commit crime, have police arrest you, be put before the court, and then go out and commit crime again the next night.”
The government could also reincarnate the previous LNP government-era policy of sending 17-year-olds to adult prisons, which was undone by its Labor successors.
Attorney-General Deb Frecklington would not rule out changing the laws to again send 17-year-olds to adult prisons.
About 200 17-year-olds were moved from adult prisons at the time the laws were repealed by the former Labor government.