Former attorney-general Jarrod Bleijie. Credit:Glenn Hunt Ms D'Ath said the review found that the three-year cost of the trial had reached $16.7 million - and "more importantly ... has shattered the myth on which the trial was based". "It has found that the youth boot camps do not break the cycle of youth re-offending and recidivism rates of participants in the sentencing boot camps were no different to offenders in areas such as the youth detention centres," she told an estimates hearing on Thursday. "It found the program was hastily set up and the program was not supported by appropriate research. "In short it was an expensive failure, cooked up by an Attorney-General (Jarrod Bleijie) who measured success by the amount of media interest he generated.

"Today I can announce that I have directed my department to terminate the trial of boot camps. "Contracts that expire in September and October of this year will not be renewed. "My department is making arrangements to ensure a smooth transition of the young people in the only camp operating at this time to appropriate alternatives." The decision means the early intervention camps on the Gold, Fraser and Sunshine coasts and Rockhampton, as well as the sentenced boot camps in Cairns and Townsville, will close. Boyd Curran - who will run the Lincoln Springs "boot camp" youth diversionary program until October - said he was "terribly disappointed".

But he believed the decision to close the camps was made in January when the government changed. Mr Curran disputed the interpretation of the recidivism rates and the cost per child at the Beyond Billabong Lincoln Springs camp, west of Ingham in north Queensland. "It depends on how you play with the figures," Mr Curran said. "The reality is that the real cost of holding kids in detention is $1600 a day," he said. "Not $990." He questioned the $2350 cost per day, which the audit concluded was the average cost across all camps.

"They have obviously added in a lot of the infrastructure costs and I would imagine they have added on youth justice costs," he said. He said the overall "per day" cost was high because the camps were not running at full capacity. He estimated if Lincoln Springs was running at capacity, the cost per day would have been $700 per day. Mr Curran said 80 per cent of kids in juvenile detention re-offend, government workers told him. "At the moment we have 65 per cent re-offending, so that we means we have a 35 per cent improvement in recidivism," he argued.

Mr Curran said the donation to the LNP was him paying to go to a fundraising lunch with former PM John Howard. "No-one ever talks about the money I donated to Labor 15 years ago," he said. Ms D'Ath announced the review in March as part of a wider examination of youth justice issues. The state's Auditor-General released a report earlier this year finding Mr Bleijie's decision to over-rule his department's decision and award a $2.2 million contract to Beyond Billabong, despite other proven operators offering more cost-effective services, was open "to accusations of favouritism". The Auditor-General found the boot camp trial cost of $4.9 million would blow out over the two year trial to $12.3 million. The state was providing the privately run Lincoln Springs camp with Queensland Corrections staff as well as having paid $240,410 to upgrade the camp's private residence and existing farm infrastructure.

Mr Bleijie said he was still "proud" of his decision following the Auditor-General's report as he was focused on outcomes, not cost. The boot camps formed the core of a "tough on crime" approach the LNP took to the 2012 election. Shadow Attorney-General Ian Walker defended the boot camps when the government announced the review in March, describing them as "an alternative to traditional 'lock em up' detention". "I would be extremely concerned if Labor axed boot camps without providing an alternative". Queensland remains the only state in Australia to treat 17-year-olds as adults in the justice system, contrary to United Nations conventions.

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