Far from ideal

I would have hoped our penal system worked a bit better than this:

Queensland's prison population is booming, according to a new report that also warns almost half of inmates are returning to custody within two years of their release.

The state's auditor-general has found Queensland Corrective Services (QCS) is not effectively planning or facilitating the rehabilitation and reintegration of its prisoners.

In its latest report, the audit office noted there were 11,278 inmates as of June last year, which was a 54 per cent increase from a decade earlier. 

The recidivism rate is particularly bad amongst indigenous prisoners:

...the audit office also highlighted First Nations prisoners in Queensland were returning to custody at a greater rate than non-First Nations prisoners.

"In 2024−25, 55 per cent of First Nations people returned to custody in Queensland within two years compared to 36 per cent of non-First Nations people," it said.

"Only Northern Territory and New South Wales reported higher rates in the same period." ...

The auditor-general made five recommendations, including that the QCS strengthen its planning approach to prisoner rehabilitation and reintegration.

It also called for QCS to begin planning and support of the reintegration of a prisoner from the time they started their time in custody. 

 An enormous problem that is often talked about in the context of youth offending in particular is the number of people in custody with reduced mental functioning due to having suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome.  Let Claude give us some figures: 

Banksia Hill Detention Centre (WA) study — the landmark Australian study, published in BMJ Open 2018:

• 36% of young people in detention were diagnosed with FASD, one of the highest recorded rates globally, and 89% of youth detainees had at least one form of severe neurodevelopmental impairment, increasing their risk of justice involvement
• Of those diagnosed with FASD, 74% were Indigenous

Northern Territory — from the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the NT:

• In 2016, a multidisciplinary assessment of 16 children who had been in detention in the NT found 56% met diagnostic criteria for FASD
• Context on overrepresentation: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders comprise 49% of young people in detention but only 5.8% of the Australian population aged 10–17

Policy commentary — a 2011 parliamentary inquiry made the connection explicit: "It would appear that a significant number of Indigenous people who end up in detention centres and prisons are there partly as a result of the failure of governments to identify FASD as an issue underpinning their offending behaviour. As a result, punitive rather than remedial responses have prevailed"

Community prevalence baseline — outside detention, in the Fitzroy Valley (WA), a 2010 survey of 7 to 8 year old children showed 19% had FASD, among the highest rates observed worldwide, giving some sense of the underlying prevalence in the source communities.

General population comparison — the recent national estimate puts general population FASD prevalence at 3.64%, so the youth justice figures represent roughly 10x that rate.

One caveat worth flagging for any submission or advice: these are largely single-site studies (Banksia Hill, small NT samples) rather than a national justice-system census, so they're best cited as strong indicative evidence of gross overrepresentation rather than a precise national statistic. If you want, I can pull the BMJ Open Banksia Hill paper itself (Bower et al. 2018) or look into whether Queensland has any equivalent detention-based FASD prevalence data specifically, since the studies above are mostly WA/NT.

What a difficult problem to solve.

A long term start would be to heavily concentrate on trying to reduce FASD.

As to the type of post incarceration support system that can work well amongst indigenous in particular, though...that's a tough one.