‘Everybody has had a gutful’: online anti-crime groups propel Queensland to a political reckoning

In the mid-morning daylight, alongside a busy road in north Toowoomba, two First Nations girls screamed out at passing traffic: "somebody call the police".

At least one motorist did call. He said a green SUV, driven by an older white male, was following the two girls and had "swerved on to the footpath as if it were trying to hit them".

An account of the incident, like most reports of crime, was soon relayed by the witness to the 43,000 members of a local Facebook page.

"I sure hope they're okay. Thank you for caring," wrote one member of the group.

"Could also be a fed up member of the public finally taking matters into their own hands. Just sayin [sic]," said another.

Another person said: "There's always a reason behind it all. Suss that out first before condemning the bloke. Maybe they stole from him or tried to steal the car."

There are hundreds of community crime Facebook groups across Australia, some of which have existed for many years. While there are clearly diverse views within the many groups, experts and community service organisations have grown worried about the way these forums might skew community sentiment about the frequency of crime, normalise racism, and excuse calls for violence and retribution.

Their influence is no longer limited to the online space, either.

Amid heated debate about youth crime in Queensland, groups that began as modern versions of the neighbourhood watch are morphing into de facto lobby organisations, with the ear of senior politicians.

Opposition MPs have used the groups to encourage feedback on government proposals. Groups have been cited in parliament. Last year the youth justice minister, Leanne Linard, met with a Toowoomba resident (and active Facebook crime group member) about youth crime. Details were quickly broadcast to members, who total about a third of the city's population.

Last week in Toowoomba, Queensland police superintendent Doug McDonald spoke at a crime forum about the risk of vigilantism sparked by comments online.

Guardian Australia has previously reported that children living in a Queensland residential care home were the subject of death threats in a social media group - including calls for neighbours to "storm the house" and "hang whoever is inside" - after media reports incorrectly claimed the premises was a halfway house for young criminals.

Many pages have policies that forbid vilification or violent language, and overt racism is often called out. But in many cases racist posts go unchallenged by using thinly cloaked codewords - Indigenous children are referred to as "untouchables" or "skinny ankle kids", for example.

Other posts seen by the Guardian include an alert about "a large group of Aboriginal kids" at an intersection in Townsville. Multiple people suggested they wanted to "run them over" or "jam there [sic] head under the back wheel".

"Bloody lucky it wasn't me I'd run the fkers [sic] over with me [sic] truck I've mist [sic] a cupple [sic] that Have [sic] tried," said one Townsville man, whose Facebook profile shows him posing with various knives, a chainsaw and other weapons.

Cairns business owner Perri Conti attended a rally outside the state parliament on Tuesday wearing a T-shirt calling her city the "crime capital". She recalls having two cars stolen from her home; having a knife pulled at her business by a 10-year-old boy.

Conti is the sort of outspoken citizen whose anger at ongoing youth crime has brought the state to a political reckoning: a government seeking to calm anger at community meetings, and an LNP opposition that wants to remove fundamental principles of international law - that imprisonment should be a last resort for children - from the Youth Justice Act.

But Conti says what she - and other victims of crime in her community - want are real solutions, not a contest to see who can imprison the most kids.

"Everybody has had a gutful, and all the government is doing is dividing, dividing, dividing," she says.

"I'm a victim of crime; I've had my house broken in and car stolen. Since I got involved in this, you start understanding why it's happening, what these kids need.

"I've been on talkback and I've had loads of people contact me and saying 'what can I do to help?', more than people saying 'we don't give a shit about those little shits'."

Conti runs her own solutions-based Facebook page and is banned from one of the large crime pages in Cairns.

"I'm quite surprised they allow such toxic stuff. You're talking about uneducated people; they just want to lock them up, throw away the key. That doesn't solve anything. They're just keyboard warriors. I don't tolerate crap like that."

Media coverage of youth crime has also helped amplify the perception of a "crisis" or a "state of fear" - and of fed-up communities demanding tougher measures.

At the "rally" outside parliament on Tuesday morning, there were more journalists than actual protesters - at least five television crews, some doing live crosses to breakfast TV shows.

Last week's crime forum in Toowoomba, attended by ministers and the police commissioner, came after a campaign by the city's News Corp newspaper and several high-profile incidents, including the death of Robert Brown, 75, after a robbery.

Much of the coverage of the forum focused on residents "unleashing anger", mocking the police minister, or risking vigilantism.

Some called openly for corporal punishment, curfews, sending kids to the army, or giving weapons to citizens. While a few people took multiple turns at the microphone, many of those discussing the situation on the sidelines said they would support whatever helped to prevent crime.

The Queensland government announced on Monday it would perform a remarkable policy about-face. Having trashed the idea for years, Labor would now adopt the LNP's position of making breach of bail an offence for children.

The Palaszczuk government has continually referenced "community expectations" when adopting more punitive measures despite expert warnings that such policies would only make things worse.

But which communities? Whose expectations?

International studies have shown that victims of crime overwhelmingly want a justice system that prioritises prevention and rehabilitation over punishment.

Experts say media coverage of crime and anti-crime Facebook pages often present a skewed view of what communities really want.

Prof Chris Cunneen, a criminologist at James Cook University in Cairns, co-authored a 2018 study on social media, vigilantism and Indigenous people, which concluded that some community anti-crime pages fuelled moral panic and contained "overtly racialised content".

The study, which looked at four different groups, suggested these social media groups furthered populist "tropes" that crime rates are soaring, the criminal justice system is weak or loaded in favour of criminals, that courts should impose tougher penalties, and that victims want retribution.

Nowhere is this clearer than on the pages themselves, where normal people are picking up pitchforks.

"I want to run into these scum and dish out some real punishment," proclaimed a bookkeeper in her 60s, in a public Facebook group last year.

Viola*, a former mental health support worker, moved to Cairns in 2021 and became involved in several local Facebook groups. She says she wanted to feel a part of her new community.

"I wanted to join something grassroots to try and impact and help change the landscape of community safety and make an impact in a way that was collaborative, positive and constructive," she says.

"But there were certain ones that I initially joined and got involved with, and then I very quickly realised, 'Oh, this doesn't align with my values at all'. Just the amount of racism that occurs in some of these groups is just astounding, absolutely astounding.

"On the pages it feels the concept of justice has shifted to vindication and retribution because that feels better, that they want to see perpetrators suffer."

Viola says Facebook pages are seen within communities as a sort of "temperature reading" for local sentiment. That has certainly become increasingly true for politicians seeking to tap into that angry sentiment.

"But there is something about these pages that is definitely not healthy," says Viola.

"That's what I've been seeing - the rising tensions, the anger, the increase in people getting more frustrated and feeling less heard by the government.

"[Media coverage] validates the narrative that's been building that we're all unsafe: 'Cairns has gone to shit, it's the worst in Australia, all Indigenous youth are offenders or about to offend'. It's confirmation bias, even when presented with the facts it may be otherwise, their arguments become very circular."

The Queensland Police Service said it responded to the incident at Toowoomba, where a witness reported seeing a car swerve on to the footpath at two Indigenous girls.

"No offences have been identified at this time," police said.