The Mount Isa chamber of commerce has told a parliamentary public hearing that a survey they ran showed a large number of its members have suffered property crime in recent years.
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Commerce North West president Emma Harman and secretary Jessica James presented the survey results to the Mount Isa hearing of the Legal Affairs and Safety Committee's Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021.
Ms Harman told the hearing the chamber ran a survey of members in January 2020 asking them questions about property crime in their business.
"Ninety-two per cent of the respondents were victims of property crime at their business," Ms Harman said,
"Damages in excess of $1000 were quite common, but the highest single event was $50,000-plus."
Ms Harman said the survey found that school terms did not affect the crime rate.
"It did not make any difference whether it was the holidays or school; crime happened anyway," she said.
" Ninety-one per cent of the crimes were reported to police but only 25 per cent lodged an insurance claim for damages. Forty-four per cent experienced more than five separate attacks and roughly half of the respondents felt that the crimes took an emotional toll on them".
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Ms Harman presented examples of verbal feedback.
"One person wrote- The judicial system is failing us and needs to be more accountable for the way it delivers penalties," she said.
"Another said- People are trying to help, but nothing is changing because the specific group of kids offending are not being dealt with."
Ms James said one member in the accommodation and hospitality industry has been targeted by youth crime 13 times this year alone.
"Another member who owns a business locally in the CBD has had $40,000 worth of building damages in the last five years directly related to youth crime and vandalism," Ms James said,
"They are no longer able to claim this through insurance, and we do not believe that this should be the cost of doing business in Mount Isa."
Ms Harman said anecdotal evidence was the situation has gotten worse in Mount Isa in the 12 months since they conducted the survey.
"We have recently- just this morning-submitted a letter to council asking them to reconsider looking at manning the CCTV cameras that are currently already established in town," she said.
"They are there, but we believe we need to use them proactively rather than reactively."
Ms Harman said the feedback was there needed to be intervention programs that happen immediately once these kids are arrested
"The issues are extremely complex and cannot be solved in just one space," she said.
"It needs the community, the police and the judicial system all to work in harmony. We need to fix family units en masse in order to resolve the issue. On-country sentencing and intervention programs could be a very real solution that go some way to reconnecting young Indigenous offenders with their culture and their community."
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