Practitioners should note that the remaining provisions of the Making Queensland Safer Act 2025 (MQS Act) commenced on Friday, 28 February.
The provisions will:
- enable childhood findings of guilt to be admissible for a circumstance of aggravation relating to previous convictions for offences of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle in certain circumstances;
- ensure a child’s criminal history (as defined in section 6 of the Youth Justice Act 1992 as inserted by the MQS Act)reflects their full history; and
- enable a person’s child criminal history to be admitted when sentenced as an adult for a period of five years from the date of the outcome for the last childhood offence.
Queensland Police Service has released information regarding changes to QPS criminal history information.
Sections 39-53 and 58 of the Making Queensland Safer Act 2024 were proclaimed to start on 28 February 2025. These sections impact the criminal history information which will be admissible against children and some adults.
The relevant new legislative provisions are found in sections 6, 11, 15, 18, 20-22, 36, 148, 148A, 148B, 150, 150A, 154, 252G, and 438-440 of the Youth Justice Act 1992.
An upgrade to the QPS information system (QPRIME) is required to automate the necessary changes to the following documents, and this solution is several months away:
- Queensland Court Outcomes history;
- Queensland Court Outcomes (juvenile); and
- Queensland Person History (Not for Production at Sentence).
Given the timing of the commencement of these provisions, the QPS has had to implement a manual work-around until the technical upgrade is complete. Prosecution Services are in the process of engaging Prosecution Support Officers to manually create the necessary criminal history information.
Practitioners will see the following changes/impacts as a result:
If you have access to criminal history information via the SSoDR portal:
Until such time as the necessary QPRIME and SSoDR upgrades are complete, the above listed documents, which are currently accessed through SSoDR, may not be a complete record of all admissible criminal history against a person.
In the meantime, if practitioners need to obtain a copy of a person’s criminal history record admissible with respect to a prosecution, contact your local Police Prosecution Corps.
Changes to the documents containing a person’s admissible criminal history:
In future proceedings, you may be provided with up to three documents containing relevant criminal history for an adult defendant, namely:
- A Queensland Court Outcomes document (unchanged);
- A Queensland Childhood Criminal History Information document (for production at sentence for adult) (new document); and
- Possibly, a document from Youth Justice outlining Restorative Justice Agreements made by the person, as a child, within the last five years, provided the referral was made and the agreement was entered into after proclamation (new document).
In future proceedings, you may be provided with up to two documents containing relevant criminal history for a child defendant: the Queensland Child Criminal History (for production at sentence for child) (new document); and possibly, a document from Youth Justice outlining Restorative Justice Agreements made by the child, provided the referral was made, and the agreement was entered into, after proclamation (new document).
Share this article