Queensland Law Society cautioned against the expansion of police powers under Jack’s Law, at a public hearing at Parliament House yesterday.
QLS Children’s Law Committee Chair Damian Bartholomew and QLS Criminal Law Committee Chair Kristy Bell addressed the State Government’s Justice, Integrity and Community Safety Committee on proposed amendments to the law, which authorises police officers to use a hand-held scanner to detect knives or other weapons in certain places.
The Police Powers and Responsibilities (Making Jack’s Law Permanent) and other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 seeks to make the law permanent before its scheduled expiry on 30 October 2026.
It also proposes to allow a police officer to use a hand-held scanner in a “relevant place” without the need to obtain an authority from a senior officer.
Damian said the Society supported measures to preserve and enhance community safety, and acknowledged the important role of police officers.
“However, the Society believes that community safety and security is best served by maintaining a balance between individual rights and liberties and restrictions on the overexpansion of police powers,” he said.
Nicklin MP Martin Hunt questioned how human rights would be impacted when wanding was already conducted at some public facilities, such as airports.
Kristy responded: “Where a member of the public is entering an area where there is this perception of potential risk, that member of the public can voluntarily subject themselves to that safeguard and that protective measure, knowing that it’s a condition of entry.
“But when we’re talking about expanding these powers into public places generally, there’s not that anticipation and perhaps not that justification for the exercise of that power,” she said,
Kristy said the expansion was not supported by evidence from the two-year trial of the law between 2021 and 2023.
Maiwar MP Michael Berkman asked how wanding enlivened police stop-and-search powers.
Kristy said statistics showed a discrepancy between the number of people charged versus the number of weapons actually detected, and between weapons offences and other offences, and she noted the importance of acknowledging this type of data.
“There is a real risk of net-widening in the Society’s perspective in the detection of other crimes and the risk of these powers being exercised in relation to other matters,” she said.
Damian added there was the potential for vulnerable groups to be disproportionately affected by this, because they may have less of an understanding about what was being asked of them by police.
“Young people in particular are less likely to be aware of what it is that might be evoking that response from the wanding, and so therefore leave themselves more vulnerable,” he said.
“The Children’s Law Committee experience is that we have seen there are some young people who of course don’t understand the parameters of this law, and this has then resulted in an adverse interface with police.
“An unfortunate consequence of this is that there is an increase in the number of young people being charged with police-related offences.”
Capalaba MP Russell Field suggested the detection of 1300 weapons from 100,000 wandings during the trial was evidence that Jack’s Law was working.
Damian pointed out that the purpose of the law was to prevent knife crime, not necessarily to locate knives, and that a drop in the incidence of knife crime had not been observed.
“We’re also very aware of the fact that of the items that were found, charges didn’t necessarily arise. Of the 1300 weapons, some of those were people who had lawful reasons to be in possession of them.
“Just the finding of weapons in a very small number of cases, does that then justify the significant infringement on human rights of the capacity to move freely?”
The committee is due to table its report on Friday, 23 May 2025.
Share this article