LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
Dear Sir, I caught the news coverage of that horrific youth assault in Logan recently and was just utterly disgusted by it—especially the fact that they all walked out on bail, and the weak response to the girl who filmed the whole thing. It really stuck with me.
The sickening footage out of Kingston, Logan, isn’t just a wake-up call, it is a flashing red siren that Queensland’s juvenile justice system is fundamentally broken.
The facts are undisputed, indefensible, and stomach-turning. A 14-year-old boy named Callum, is described by those who know him as a kind, gentle soul whose disabilities prevent him from even registering social cues of danger, he was lured to a bus stop. There, he was ambushed, punched to the ground, and repeatedly stomped on the head. The results? A fractured skull, brain injuries, and permanent hearing loss. All while a 13-year-old girl filmed the carnage for digital clout.
Yet, the collective public fury has peak-stalled at a familiar roadblock: the perpetrators are walking free on bail.
If You Are Old Enough to Plan an Ambush, You are Old Enough to Stay in a Cell
The community’s response to the news that this pack of offenders was granted bail is unanimous outrage. The logic of the current legal framework is entirely backwards. The system treats these individuals as children who “don’t know any better” the second they face a magistrate, despite the fact that they acted with the tactical precision of seasoned criminals when luring, cornering, and brutally assaulting a vulnerable target.
An 11-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 17-year-old managed to orchestrate a pre-planned, filmed ambush that left a boy permanently altered. If a person is old enough to understand how to bait a trap, film a crime, and violently stomp on another human being’s skull, they are old enough to face the immediate, non-negotiable consequence of a remand cell.
By releasing these offenders back into the community on bail, the justice system sends a message that the safety of innocent, disabled children matters less than the convenience of their attackers. It is a slap in the face to Callum’s traumatised family and a dangerous green light to the worsening epidemic of youth violence.
Apathic Leniency: The Girl’s Crucial Role Dismissed
Equally offensive to the public conscience is the weak, almost apathetic action taken against the 13-year-old girl who acted as the catalyst for this horror. Police statements that she has simply been “dealt with under the provisions of the Youth Justice Act” feel like a bureaucratic shrug. Let us be entirely clear: without her, this crime does not happen. She allegedly played the calculated role of the bait, deliberately luring a vulnerable boy to his coordinates, and then pulled out her phone to document his destruction.
To treat her actions as a lesser, secondary offense is a catastrophic failure of logic. She was the architect of the trap and the director of the footage. She deserves, at the very minimum, the exact same severe punishment as the boys who executed the physical assault. Shielding her under the cover of apathetic youth justice protocols diminishes her active malice.
The Role of Rightful Convictions as a True Deterrent
True justice must stand firmly on the principle that the system must protect the innocent by properly penalizing the guilty. While ensuring innocent people are never wrongfully convicted is paramount to maintaining public trust in the law, it is equally critical that rightful convictions carry sentences severe enough to act as an unyielding deterrent.
When there is zero doubt about identity, intent, or the horrific outcomes of an assault, the justice system must hammer the offenders with maximum penalties. If rightful convictions are softened by a preoccupation with rehabilitation, the law loses its power to deter future monsters. A civilized society requires that the consequence of a violent crime must be so severe that no teenager would ever consider rolling the dice on someone else’s life.
A Prime Case for “Adult Crime, Adult Time”—With Extra Penalties for Digital Clout
This is the ultimate test case for Queensland’s landmark “Adult Crime, Adult Time” framework. These children executed an adult-level atrocity, and they must face adult-level consequences. Because the crime involves the deliberate targeting of a person with an impairment, the law must apply the full weight of its maximum statutory penalties.
Furthermore, the law must evolve to penalize the sheer, arrogant stupidity of recording these acts. Filming a brutal assault to distribute online or keep as a trophy isn’t just evidence—it is an independent act of psychological cruelty against the victim and their family. There must be an immediate legislative shift to enforce mandatory extra prison time for any offender who films, distributes, or participates in the recording of a violent crime. If you are stupid enough to document your own savagery for digital clout, that footage should automatically lock your cell door for an extended sentence.
Yours,
Steven Fennell
Fennell is a Queensland resident and was exonerated of a wrongful murder conviction by the High Court. He has often contributed to wrongfulconvictionsreport.org and commented on posts.
This is an emotional response, which isn’t really effective in advocacy.
The facts are clear throughout history. Jailing people doesn’t deter criminals, and youthful aggression is nothing new. It’s just filmed and distributed and captures this exact sentiment, almost guaranteed.
Jailing them in youth all but cements them as long term offenders. The logic is that society has no greater interest in seeing young offenders rehabilitate. It starts with what looks like leniency, because intervention and support services are deemed more appropriate, successful. This person is looking at a crime through an adult prism, and thinks of these offenders in the same way. Save your outrage for your state government. According to them, youth crime would be gone by now.
Are we learning yet?
Ugh
Mr Smith
The “emotional response” critique is rich, coming as it does wrapped in its own theatrical sigh and a closing “Ugh.”
It is difficult to take seriously an argument that dismisses outrage as ineffective while itself resorting to the rhetorical equivalent of a rolled-eye emoji.
If the original letter is “emotional,” then the reply is the same emotion wearing a slightly more self-congratulatory hat: history is invoked, deterrence is waved away, and the whole matter is reduced to a weary lesson the rest of us have apparently failed to learn.
One can debate the efficacy of detention, the design of youth justice, or the proper balance between rehabilitation and accountability without first declaring the other side’s feelings disqualifying, and then promptly performing one’s own. That particular manoeuvre does not elevate the discussion; it merely reveals the critic has not escaped the very prism he claims to diagnose.
Mr Smith,
Reading the exchange, there appears to be a fairly fundamental problem with your response: you seem to conflate remand or detention pending proceedings with imprisonment imposed as a sentence after conviction.
Those are not the same thing, and treating them as though they are produces something of an apples-and-oranges argument.
Mr Fennell’s central proposition was not simply that “jailing young people deters crime.” His argument was directed much more specifically at the question of whether offenders who are old enough to plan an ambush, lure a vulnerable victim, participate in a brutal assault and record it should nevertheless be released on bail because they are young.
You have criticised the efficacy of detention, argued that youth detention can entrench offending, and pointed to rehabilitation and intervention. Those are perfectly legitimate subjects for debate.
But they don’t actually answer the proposition put forward.
Whether imprisonment is an effective deterrent is principally a question about sentencing. Whether a young person should remain in custody while proceedings are dealt with is a different question entirely.
That distinction matters.
You appear to have taken an argument about the appropriate response to an alleged act of extraordinary violence and transformed it into an argument about whether incarceration is an effective long-term youth justice strategy. You then proceeded to defeat the second argument, rather than the first.
That may make for a satisfying rebuttal, but it doesn’t make it a rebuttal of the position actually advanced.
There is also an interesting irony in your criticism that Mr Fennell is viewing the matter “through an adult prism.” The point he appears to be raising is not that every young offender should simply be treated as an adult. It is whether chronological age should be allowed to outweigh demonstrated conduct when assessing the immediate question of liberty.
A young person does not cease to be young because they commit a serious offence. But neither does the fact that they are young necessarily answer every question about bail, risk, accountability or public safety.
One can strongly support rehabilitation and still ask whether some conduct is sufficiently serious to justify detention pending the outcome of proceedings.
So there are really two separate debates here.
The first is: Does youth detention work as a long-term mechanism for rehabilitation and deterrence?
The second is: When alleged conduct involves planning, deliberate targeting and extreme violence, does youth alone provide a sufficient reason for release on bail?
Your response addresses the first.
Mr Fennell’s principal argument addressed the second.
Until those two questions are separated, the discussion risks becoming an argument about two different things — apples and oranges — with each side believing it has answered the other.
Well written Steven.
Unfortunately it will remain just that a well written letter.
It seems the letters we write, conversations we have with our politicians fall on deaf ears. Too many have become consumed by short-term political survival, party interests and the next election cycle, while serious problems unfold in the very communities they were elected to represent.
What happened to this young boy should disturb every Australian, but particularly every parent of a vulnerable child. Our son is a vulnerable gentle and kind Down syndrome man. Safeguarding is paramount. When a child with a disability can allegedly be deliberately lured into an ambush, subjected to horrific violence, permanently injured and have that violence filmed, the community is entitled to expect more than expressions of concern and familiar political talking points. We are entitled to expect action.
There also needs to be an honest conversation about accountability. Compassion and rehabilitation have an important place in youth justice, but they cannot come at the expense of protecting innocent people. When serious violence is planned, coordinated and carried out against a particularly vulnerable victim, the consequences must reflect the gravity of that conduct. Otherwise, what message are we sending — to victims, to families and to other young people?
And governments are not the only institutions that have become disconnected from the communities they serve. Local councils were once another important layer of community representation — close enough to residents to understand what was happening on the ground and prepared to advocate when communities were struggling. Increasingly, however, local government itself seems dominated by political allegiances and ambitions rather than genuine grassroots representation. In fact, this is a good example why we need to get rid of them.
We keep hearing that governments are listening. But listening without acting is meaningless.
There comes a point when community anger is not an overreaction; it is a warning that ordinary people have lost confidence in the institutions that are supposed to protect them.
This horrific assault should be one of those moments when politicians of every persuasion put ideology and political careers aside and ask a very simple question:
If our justice system cannot adequately protect a vulnerable 14-year-old child from calculated, predatory violence — and respond decisively when that violence occurs — then who exactly is the system protecting?