Extraordinary youth justice move will see watch houses declared prisons
Queensland’s police watch houses will be declared official youth prisons under an extraordinary suite of emergency laws which override the human rights act.
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Queensland’s police watch houses will be declared official youth prisons and human rights law protecting children overridden under extraordinary laws put forward by Police Minister Mark Ryan.
Authorities will also be allowed to hold children in watch houses indefinitely, in a move slammed as disgraceful and outrageous by children’s rights advocates.
The Opposition has called the slew of surprise amendments the “biggest affront to democracy in Queensland’s history” and a “disgraceful abuse of parliamentary process”.
By moving the amendments on a piece of legislation that has already gone through the committee process, the state government will be able to pass the laws without scrutiny.
It comes as the state government admits the youth detention centres are not meeting demand and emergency measures are needed to hold young offenders.
The state government has also moved to protect itself against further embarrassing legal challenges involving children in watch houses after human rights advocates tested the lawfulness of the practice in the Supreme Court.
The unprecedented surprise changes to youth justice laws moved by Mr Ryan have been described by the Opposition and the Greens as “disgraceful” and a “dog act”.
Mr Ryan slipped in a total of 48 pages worth of amendments to legislation originally focused on child sex offenders, with the changes ranging from youth justice, to legalising public drunkenness, easing laws impacting sex workers and rule changes to save the mining town of Glenden.
Under the law changes a place like a police watch house or adult prison could be declared a youth detention centre even if it does not comply with human rights law.
This is to make room for young offenders as the imprisoned population increases and the state government rushes to build two more youth prisons – one in Woodford and another in Cairns.
This change will be “time-limited” and will expired on December 31, 2026 with the possibility to extend it to end 2027.
Children’s rights advocate Debbie Kilroy blasted the changes as disgraceful and outrageous.
“This knee-jerk reaction is going to ensure more violence,” the Sisters Inside CEO said.
“What this government is tabling in parliament does not create safe communities, it creates more violent communities.
“This is all about politics, not about children’s lives, that’s where they have lost the plot, this government.”
Currently the law outlines a young offender should be moved from a police watch house to a detention centre “as soon as practicable” but Ms Kilroy said children were being held for weeks on end in watch houses.
This will be replaced with a “framework” about the “timing of the transfer” of a child to custody which “ensures any relevant factor can be taken into account”.
“We are facing a particularly challenging set of circumstances that mean demand for youth detention centres is far greater than capacity,” Mr Ryan said.
Ms Kilroy said she recently intervened in a case in which a young girl was kept in a watch house cell wearing a smock with no underwear.
“There are adult men across from them yelling out perverted and sexualised things,” Ms Kilroy said.
“One girl was too scared to even sit on the toilet because they could see her, we had to get her moved to (another watch house).
“It’s dehumanising, it is violence perpetrated to the core of Queensland children who this government claim they are here to nourish and build up.
“This does nothing but decompose to children to point they will act out at authority and any adult who gets in their way.”
Ms Kilroy said the government changed bail laws to keep kids in detention but now had to house them in watch houses due to overcrowding.
“This government will not fund what works,” she said.
“Mark Ryan leading the charge of the attack on vulnerable children, who are predominantly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island children, is gob smacking and the harm he is perpetrating with these laws will reverberate for generations to come.
“These are the children that will be pipelined into adult prisons and what we will see is more violence.”
Ms Kilroy said children in the system had been left with “no hope” and believed adults and those in power did not care about them.
“They’re building prisons and ensuring these kids stay in watch houses when we know that’s not what works,” she said.
“They are a disgrace, it’s absolutely disgraceful that we are treating children like this.
“Children are vulnerable and their brain hasn’t developed so the impact of solitary confinement in a watch house is enormous.”
Ms Kilroy said she had met with organisers of the Voice for Victims rally held today and even victims of crime agreed that simply locking children up was not the answer.
“Nobody wants children locked up, we want to make the community safe and build children up, the only people in this state who don’t’ want that is the government,” she said.
“The government is using these children as a political pawn.”
Greens MP Michael Berkman said to call the government’s “blatant disregard for democracy and human rights” a disgrace was “an understatement”.
“It is an absolute dog act to introduce amendments like this – that suspend a child as young as 10’s human rights when they’re in an adult police watch house – with no prior warning,” he said.
“The purpose of the Human Rights Act is to protect children from the specific harm that’s known to occur if they are placed in the same watch houses and prison facilities as adults.
“Labor suspended the Human Rights Act so that they could lock up more kids. Now they are suspending it again for the children being held in adult police watch houses as a consequence – children as young as 10 who haven’t even faced trial yet.”
The move comes less than a month after human rights advocates took legal action against the state challenging the continued detention of juveniles in the state’s watch houses.
As a result of the hearing, the Supreme Court made orders for the immediate removal of three children from watch houses across the state into juvenile detention facilities.
At the time, the advocates who brought the action described the continued detention of children in watch houses as unlawful, saying the practice was shocking and a serious breach of human rights.
The legal action earlier this month was brought by Youth Empowered Towards Independence Incorporated (YETI), a Cairns-based non-government support agency for vulnerable young people.
YETI CEO Genevieve Sinclair said the government’s announcement was “a huge shock”.
“The government is making crime worse,” she said.
“Putting young people in watch houses drives crime.
“They are recidivism factories and it’s in nobody’s interest to have them there, the community cannot be safe.”
Ms Sinclair said she accepted there was a need to detain children but said it should be done in appropriate facilities where they had access to therapeutic intervention and education.
“We all agree, even the voice for victims of crime today in point nine of their plan said watch houses are not the right place for children, police don’t believe watch houses are right place for children, watch houses drive crime.
“Having children in police watch houses makes crime worse and it’s in nobody’s interest except the youth justice minister’s.”
Ms Sinclair said the issue was rife and there were currently at least five juvenile females who had been in a North Queensland watch house for eight days.
“When young people are detained, we want them in youth detention centres that are appropriate for rehabilitation,” she said.
“We know some young people need to be contained, we’ve never disputed that, but when you detain them in these sorts of conditions they’re coming out worse.”
Originally published as Extraordinary youth justice move will see watch houses declared prisons
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