A re-elected Queensland Liberal National Party government would build two 90-bed youth "reintegration centres" in an effort to rehabilitate young offenders.
LNP Leader Tim Nicholls is in Cairns for Day 18 of the election campaign, where he announced a suite of measures to reduce crime in the region and across the state.
The $40 million promise would replace the Labor government's planned suburban youth bail houses, which the LNP has strongly opposed, claiming they would put the community at risk.
"Labor's plan for community bail houses is a knee-jerk reaction, it hasn't thought through the program properly," Mr Nicholls told reporters on Wednesday.
"(Our program) is a holistic program that deals with .. the causes and tries to deal with those, it deals with people in the system, and then it also makes sure that those young thugs that commit the crime are appropriately punished."
Labor has previously accused the LNP of a "scare campaign" on community bail centres, after a number of local MPs and candidates started posting pictures of facilities in their electorates on social media, speculating whether they were the sites of future bail houses.
One of the LNP's facilities would be built in the Lockyer Valley, and the other would be built in the Cairns region at a location yet to be announced, with 90 beds across the two centres.
Mr Nicholls says the facilities would also serve as a stop-gap for younger offenders who commit serious crimes like murder, to transition to adult facilities when they turned 18.
People aged 17 to 25 would be housed in the centres, while younger offenders would be sent to youth detention or allowed into the community on bail, depending on a court's recommendation.
Mr Nicholls also announced an extra $1.5 million for social benefit bonds aimed at tackling vagrancy in Cairns, and $8 million for programs to reduce the rate of reoffending for youths.
