Being locked up as a 13-year-old for skipping school negatively altered the trajectory of her life, Debbie Kilroy believes.
"After I was put in that children's prison and the harm it inflicted on me, it was a downward spiral," she tells AAP.
"I was pipelined onto the street of homelessness and then I was committing offences because it was the only way to survive."
Ms Kilroy was last sent away in 1989 for six years after selling cannabis to undercover police.
A lack of support and education as a child led her down the wrong path, she says, because she "knew nothing else".
Now the chief executive of support organisation Sisters Inside, she says incarcerating Queensland's most vulnerable children under new adult crime, adult time laws instead of investing in reform, will only pave the way for a life of crime.
"It started because school wasn't engaging me and I was running away from it," she adds.
"It doesn't make any sense to me that 50 years later we are talking about doing the same harm."
The incoming Liberal National government urgently introduced its controversial Making Queensland Safer legislation to sentence youth criminals to adult punishment if they commit serious offences, dubbed "adult time, adult crime".
Children face life for five offences including murder, manslaughter and grievous bodily harm under the centrepiece election commitment.
Juveniles as young as 10 will be considered for the same maximum sentence as adults for 13 offences, including car theft doubling to 10 years.
The legislation also removes detention as a last resort entirely, meaning magistrates will have more freedom to imprison children if they deem it necessary.
For victim survivor Ben Cannon, the laws should have come sooner.
"We've got a system that is not broken from a year-long problem," he says.
"This is a decade-plus social issue that let down four-year-olds who are now violent 14-year-olds."
Mr Cannon came to help his neighbour, rugby union great Toutai Kefu, during a violent home invasion by four teenagers in 2021 where the family was seriously injured.
He managed to stop one of the intruders and held the child down until police arrived.
"One of the hardest things for me as a victim was to see a young person the same age as my son being so horrifically violent and horrible to another human," he says.
"I still question how is it the best choice that person has in life to be in my neighbour's house at 2am trying to stab half a dozen people?
"That still haunts me."
Mr Cannon says the new government was left with little choice but to introduce harsh laws preventing teenagers engaging in extreme violence or repeatedly stealing cars.
"This draws the line in the sand and says, 'enough is enough'," Mr Cannon said.
However, he emphasised that it must be balanced to prevent the four-year-olds of today from becoming violent teenagers.
"Without balance and understanding that unless we get better at fixing young kids and the social systems that they unfortunately fall into, we're going to continue on this cycle," he says.
"Then it doesn't matter how tough our laws are, we're just not going to have a better society."
Mr Cannon says he wants the laws to be accompanied by significant investment in social services and education.
The proposed laws have been criticised after a statement of compatibility by Attorney-General Deb Frecklington indicated the legislation doesn't stack up against human rights.
"I acknowledge that the amendments in the bill ... are incompatible with human rights," she said.
"However, I consider that the current situation with respect to youth crime in Queensland is exceptional."
The government has conceded that the laws would increase the number of children in detention centres and watchhouses as well as disproportionately impact Aboriginal children.
"This impact results in limitations to the protection from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," the statement said.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child slammed what it said was a violation of international convention.
"We do not agree that the so-called 'exceptional circumstances' warrant what will be a flagrant disregard for children's rights," Chair Ann Skelton said.
"We also don't agree that it will make Queensland safer."
Ms Skelton urged the government to stand by the principle that children should be treated differently from adults.
Ms Kilroy says the concession that human rights will be breached under the laws is a "disturbing departure" from the foundations of justice and equity.
"It is a dangerous bill that represents a dangerous escalation in criminalising children and contravening human rights."
During parliamentary scrutiny this week, stakeholders have also criticised the legislation as making children "sacrificial lambs" while knowingly violating freedoms.
"In any other context that is called child abuse," Queensland Human Rights Commission Chair Scott McDougall told a public hearing.
Not only were the laws criticised but the short consultation period, consisting of two public hearings and several days of private committee hearings, also came under fire.
Ms Kilroy notes that the government holds a majority in the state's unicameral legislature and can pass laws as it wishes.
"There are no checks and balances, no accountability," she says.
But Mr Cannon insists they needed to be rushed.
"When you've sat with someone that in the darkness of night had their loved one murdered by one of these repeat offenders then urgencies needed," he says.
"Whether we get it right, time will tell.
"But you can't continue to allow these behaviours to go on."
Premier David Crisafulli argues that his government was following the democratic process by allowing submissions and committee scrutiny but must uphold its election promise to pass the laws by Christmas.
"Any good committee process can allow people to have a suggestion but just to be clear, we campaigned on adult crime, adult time," he said.
"We will fulfil that."
The steadfast campaign to pass the laws comes as the Department of Youth Justice reports there were 46,130 court-recorded convictions by young Queenslanders in 2023-24.
Violent offending - murder, manslaughter, serious assault - has increased 8.3 per cent since 2019.
Mr Cannon says the laws mark a moment for victims, who finally feel heard.
"It has felt for a long time the justice system has had an imbalance where the rights of the criminal have been overseen or seen first before that of the victim," he says.
But Ms Kilroy sees the laws as a "full frontal attack" on the most vulnerable children, especially Aboriginal kids.
She says the children themselves are victims but the government has not included them in the rhetoric of "victim numbers" instead deciding to throw kids into prison without support.
"Locking up children for longer is never going to work as it does not give any healing to the victims and children are the victims," she says.
"This is just fuelling our love affair with caging children."
She is instead calling for funding for services like Sisters Inside to re-engage kids with education, get them into jobs, reconnect with their families and communities or just give them food and water.
