The ACT Party is reiterating its calls for youth who commit crimes to be fitted with ankle monitoring bracelets amid a spike in retail crime.
It comes as offending jumped 39% in the last year, according to statistics released by the National Party.
Last year, 292 retail crimes were recorded every day — up from 140 per day in 2018, the party's police spokesperson Mark Mitchell said.
ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden told Breakfast retail crime "clearly is going up" and an increasing number of people who own or work in businesses "don't feel safe going to work".
"It's not OK. Everybody should feel that they have a safe work environment," she said.
She said crime rates have risen due to an increase in truancy.
"What we need are more consequences for crime, but we need more kids going to school so they're not committing crime in the community.
"When we've got kids who are 11 going out, committing serious crime, there needs to be consequences for it."
It comes as offending jumped 39% in the last year. (Source: Breakfast)
Van Velden reiterated the party's calls for children who commit crimes to be fitted with ankle monitoring bracelets "so that we know where they are so that the police can stop them committing crime in the community".
But the Green Party's justice spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman, who worked as a lawyer for a decade before entering politics, argued that extreme measures such as ankle bracelets or military boot camps — proposed by the National Party — are not the answer.
"Every time they do this, every time they come up with punitive responses to things — especially youth crime — it just goes up," she said.
Ghahraman said while truancy "might be an issue", "about 90%" of those under the age of 19 who enter the criminal justice system suffer from serious learning disabilities, meaning "investing in things like inclusive education is a 'hard on crime' response".
"All of this stuff about being punitive? Not so much."
She added: "Isn't it actually cruel to tell victims of crime, who are rightly concerned, that [punitive measures are] actually a solution when it's not?"
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