Police are concerned about what they are calling a "significant rise" in youth crime in Far North Queensland.

Officers say in the last three months, 95 children have been charged with more than 450 crimes ranging from assault, to breaking into homes and stealing cars.

For the residents of Edmonton, just outside Cairns, the past three months have been difficult.

The head of the Traders Association and petrol station owner, Phillip Ungerer, says there is a constant problem with children out at night, breaking the law.

"It was absolutely hell out here. There was a gang of probably about 15 to 16-year-olds. They vandalised a number of businesses out here in Edmonton, graffitied everything that wasn't walking," he said.

He says the children are local to the area.

"I actually feel sorry for these kids. I mean at such a tender age in their lives, they're going nowhere," he said.

The head of the Cairns child protection and investigation unit, Detective Senior Sergeant Glen Horan, agrees offences committed by children in Far North Queensland are a major problem.

In the past two years he has seen a leap in the level of youth crime in the area and he knows who is offending.

"Statistically between 10 and 19 [years old] is the larger group of young offenders, and about 85 per cent of those young offenders are male and identify as Indigenous," he said.

"So offenders are predominantly male, though we do have some, a small group of female offenders as well who commit similar type offences."

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Targeting young offenders

Since 2010 the Cairns police force has been running a specialised operation to target this rise in youth crime.

Detective Senior Sergeant Horan says these children are, for the most part, breaking into homes, assaulting people and stealing cars.

"Most of the crimes committed by young people aren't particularly sophisticated," he said.

Since July this year the Cairns juvenile justice unit has charged 95 children with more than 450 offences.

Detective Senior Sergeant Horan says in one case five boys amassed 150 charges in just three months. But he says while those figures seem high, it is not that alarming to police.

"Across a year, there's normally only a core group of offenders, so although we talk about upwards of 500 offences for the year, we would find that there's probably only a relatively low number who commit a vast majority of the offences," he said.

The figures from the Children's Court of Queensland for 2010 to 2011 point to a decrease in the number of young people coming before the courts.

But Detective Senior Sergeant Horan says that is because police are trying to use alternatives to the justice system.

"We can caution young offenders if they happen to have been previously involved in offending behaviours, we can also refer young people to youth justice conferences," he said.

"The final thing we would do is refer them to the court."

Crimes of boredom

Bob Katter is the Federal Member for Kennedy, which includes the Cairns district.

He has met with community members in Far North Queensland twice in the past six weeks, where he says the issue of youth crime comes up again and again.

He says these boys have no role models and poverty and homelessness are driving them to crime.

"If you've got to go home to a home where there are 15 people, or in some cases no home at all, you'll tend to get in mischief. A lazy mind, a not used mind, is a devil's workshop and that's part of it too - just simply boredom," he said.

Fran Lindsay is the vice-president of the Edmonton Traders' Association and a long-time resident of the region.

She says it is ultimately the responsibility of parents to supervise their children, but the problem needs an entire community approach.

"I think we all have to become involved, we can't just rubbish these young people, because there's a lot of good kids there," she said.

The Queensland Government is now expanding a program that puts police officers in schools and there will now be 50 officers in schools across the state.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek says the Government is aware of a problem of youth crime in Queensland's far north, but he says it is not targeting any particular area in the state.

"We have significant behavioural problems throughout the school system and not just in the state system, but we want them to work with our guidance officers and nurses, our behavioural support people," he said.

"School-based police just augment those sorts of services to make sure that we're doing as much as we can for people who are having difficulties with the school system, because we don't want them affecting other students who want to get on with schooling."

Mr Langbroek says putting police in schools will mean early intervention for children at risk of offending.

"Everyone behaves differently when there's a police officer around. We think there's nothing better than having an extension of the school-based police program to supplement what we know about police in the community generally," he said.