The Lab
Nine questions we are putting to the data, in public, before we know the answers.
Each one is registered before we run it, states what we expect to find, and is then handed to a process whose job is to prove it wrong. Where the data disagrees with the prediction is where the bugs and the stories live, so we publish that too.
207
watch house months, out of 63 watch houses across 17 months, when the average number of people held each day was higher than the number of beds. The table only exists because somebody asked for it on notice.
What this does not claim
That we have read the documents. The public record layer holds what the state said, under obligation, on a date, and every entry in it is marked as unread, because relevance came from titles and subject lines rather than from opening the PDF. This figure is one of the few we have opened. And the same question asked for medical incidents and staffing in those watch houses: the Queensland Police Service refused those sections, so that data does not exist. A question's subject line says what was asked, not what was answered.
Ledger updated 2026-08-21
The watch-house ledger
How many children are in Queensland police watch houses tonight, how many are First Nations, and how long has the longest-held child been there?
Who gets the youth justice money in Queensland
Which organisations win contracts, how much, and was there a competitive process? If not, was a reason recorded?
Two invoices: detention vs community
What does one day of youth detention cost, what does one day of community supervision cost, and what does each buy?
Last updated: which official datasets have gone quiet
Which government data feeds have silently stopped publishing?
Who funds the alternatives
Where does the money for youth justice organisations actually come from, and how many are one contract away from closing?
One honest place picture per justice reinvestment community
What do crime trends, school disadvantage, income support and detention exposure really look like in each community, and what does the community itself report?
Announced. Then what?
When a government announces youth justice funding, can the money be traced to a contract and a payment?
Every youth justice organisation in Queensland
Who are ALL the youth justice organisations and programs in Queensland, what money reaches each of them, and will they claim their own record when it is handed to them?
Who governs the organisations, and what does that connect
Across Australia, who sits on the boards of Aboriginal community-controlled organisations working in justice, what else do those people govern, and does the sector connect through shared leadership or is it genuinely locally held?
How the lab works: six gates, in order, every time.
01
Register the question
Before touching the data we write down the question, why it matters, and which sources we will use.
02
Predict the answer
We state the expected result in advance. Where the data disagrees with the prediction, that is where the bugs and the stories live.
03
Run it with plain code
Every published number comes from a script anyone can re-run. AI helps us read and draft; it never produces a figure.
04
Try to break it
An independent check re-derives every figure from scratch and hunts for double counting, bad parsing and wrong assumptions.
05
Right of reply
Anyone named critically sees the finding before the public does, and their response is published alongside ours.
06
Publish, with receipts
Every figure carries its source, its date and its query. When we get something wrong, the correction publishes at the same volume.
9 experiments · 2 published · 1 live