SE Qld watchhouses in crisis amid overcrowding, kids held with adults

Multiple police watchhouses in South East Queensland are in crisis, with children held with adults and overcrowding forcing prisoners to be ferried between them.

Children are being held with adults at Caboolture watchhouse.

• Editor’s view: A hulking problem

Adults held in a watchhouse touted as a child-specific facility are being processed with greater priority while some juveniles are stuck inside for as long as 17 days, an advocacy group has warned.

Youth Advocacy Centre CEO Katherine Hayes said that in the past week there had been at least 10 adults held in the Caboolture watchhouse, along with a large number of children.

As of Wednesday morning there were 21 children in the watchhouse, with two adults.

It comes as leaked internal documents reveal between February 2 and 10, Southport watchhouse had capacity issues at least nine times.

Meanwhile, Logan watchhouse overcrowded four times and had capacity issues on two other occasions, and Coolangatta lockup was full with seven prisoners almost every day.

In 2023 it was announced the Caboolture watchhouse would be converted into a child facility to help deal with the demand across the state.

Ms Hayes said adults being put in the same watchhouse despite being held in different sections was a huge problem.

“The youth hub is something that’s supposed to be purpose built for kids, but it really is just a watchhouse with no real adaptations to it,” she said.

“The problem is we’ve got a capacity of 31 beds in there. Last week there were about nine or 10 adults in there, and they’ve been taking precedence in terms of the processing, because apparently their court matters come on quickly.

Youth Advocacy Centre CEO Katherine Hayes

“So that means that the 20 kids in there haven’t had great access to their lawyers, any education, or any other support services.

Ms Hayes said one of the human rights conventions were that kids weren’t held near adults.

“They shouldn’t have adults in the youth hub, but there’s always adults around in the watchhouses,” she said.

“The fact that the adults are in the watchhouse means that the kids aren’t getting the access to the support and services that they have to have while they’re in there, which means that they are likely to suffer psychological consequences from being in the watchhouse for 18 days, which is the longest stay at the moment.

“So the psychiatrists that visit the kids in watchhouses say they generally see a decline in their mental health after 24 hours.

“ So now we’ve got maybe a dozen kids held for over a week around Queensland. This isn’t the worst it’s been, and it’s going to get worse.”

Ms Hayes said Caboolture watchhouse was not built as a youth detention centre.

“Under the youth justice act, anything that is operating as a detention centre must be gazetted and it must meet certain criteria that’s in the act and that includes a lot of access to medical, educational, psychological support and that just doesn’t happen in the watchhouse,” she said.

“That’s why watchhouses aren’t treated as detention centres so it’s more like a holding pen at the moment.”

A police spokeswoman said the Caboolture watchhouse provided centralised access to services for young people help in QPS custody while they awaited acceptance into a Youth Detention Centre.

The Southport watchhouse regularly overflows.

“Adult prisoners will continue to be charged at the Caboolture watchhouse, and if they are required to be kept in custody, will be held separately from young people until they can be transferred to another police watchhouse as soon as possible,” she said.

“The QPS remains committed to ensuring that young people ordered into custody by a court should spend the least amount of time possible in a watchhouse before going to a detention centre.

A spokesperson from the Office of the Minister for Police and Emergency Services said the previous Labor Government failed to plan and invest in critical infrastructure.

“Until the Wacol Youth Remand Centre is operational, the Caboolture Watchhouse will continue to be used as a youth detention facility, as necessary.” he said.

“The Wacol Youth Remand Centre is due to be opened later this year.

Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak CEO Garth Morgan said they were concerned adults were in watchhouses with children.

“We see that children in adult watchhouses are problematic as it is. But this would compound the problem significantly for us,” he said.

“We’ve had years to come up with an alternative to putting kids in watchhouses, we’ve seen the trend of kids being arrested more overtime.

“The fact we have a watchhouse emergency is one that should never have been. We’ve had a lot of time to plan this. We need purpose built facilities for young people that can’t be out in the community for whatever reason and we certainly don’t want them with adults.”

Police said the Caboolture watchhouse was being used as a temporary multi-agency facility for youths remanded by the courts while they awaited placement into youth detention.

Detective turned criminologist Dr Terry Goldsworthy

A Gold Coast officer said that when the Southport watchhouse was full they had to drive offenders up to Logan.

“Logan are stuffing extra prisoners into their holding and exercise cells, they’re then left with nowhere to move other detainees to exercise, ” the police source said.

“The public would obviously be of the view that who cares, right? You commit a crime then you don’t get to complain about being locked up in s----y conditions.

“On the flip side, when you have that many people staying for extended periods in places that are not prisons it heightens the risk of illness and injury or it’ll end in a death of a child.

“None of us should be forced to wear that risk, it’s not our job.”

Former Gold Coast detective and leading criminologist with Bond University Terry Goldsworthy placed the blame squarely on political leaders.

“This is a legacy issue from the previous Labor government that failed to strategically plan for demands within the criminal justice system,” he said.

“After years of weakening the criminal justice system, the former government toughened bail laws for youth offenders and yet it had done nothing to plan for the increased demand in the detention of youth people awaiting their court matters to be finalised.”

Dr Goldsworthy believed calls from police to fast track construction of new watchhouses were not necessary and the current facilities should have sufficient capacity to deal with prisoners.

“My concern would be that these establishments are being used in effect as temporary correction centres to hold youth and adult offenders due to a lack of capacity in the proper correctional centres,” Dr Goldsworthy said.