Darwin barrister John Lawrence SC leads protest to shut down Don Dale youth detention centre

Protesters braved the blustery Top End weather to gather outside the Don Dale youth detention centre and demand its closure.

UPDATE: PROTESTERS braved the blustery Christmas Day weather to gather outside the Don Dale youth detention centre and demand its closure.

Led by prominent Darwin barrister John Lawrence SC, the demonstration marked the start of a month-long campaign “against the continued incarceration of young Aboriginal children” at the decommissioned Berrimah Prison, which now houses youth detainees.

Addressing a small crowd, protester and Larrakia elder June Mills said Aboriginal people had “had enough” after “250 years of injustice and criminalisation of our people”.

As incarceration rates of Territory children trend upwards, protesters are calling for action to address ‘gross injustices’ in the system. Picture: Supplied.

“You’re messing with our babies and you’ve been doing it a long time,” she said.

“It’s got to stop.

“You don’t have any program to counteract your genocidal behaviour in this land.”

Following the royal commission into youth justice, the NT government in 2017 agreed to act on a recommendation to shut down Don Dale and replace it with a new purpose-built facility.

EARLIER: FIFTEEN Alice Springs youth will spend Christmas locked up behind bars in the town’s overcrowded Alice Springs Watchhouse.

In Darwin’s infamous Don Dale detention centre, 35 Indigenous children will spend that day in similar circumstances.

The upwards trending figures have led Darwin barrister John Lawrence SC to call for “peaceful, civil disobedience” to address “gross injustices” in the juvenile legal system in the Northern Territory.

“Now is the time, as it was in Martin Luther King’s time, for prominent Aboriginal people to come up here together and demonstrate outside the gates of Don Dale Detention Centre, demanding its closure and the release of the record-high numbers of Aboriginal children therein,” he said.

“In my view, having been at the coalface for 35 years, there is just no option available now that has any chance of ending what needs to be ended.”

The infamous Don Dale prison now houses more youth than ever before. Picture GLENN CAMPBELL

The 2017 Northern Territory royal commission into the protection and detention of children recommended that Don Dale be permanently closed. The facility has not yet been shut and it now houses more incarcerated children than ever before.

“How could anybody possibly want Aboriginal children, damaged and vulnerable, to be kept in a facility like Berrimah prison, which is derelict, dystopian, rusting, and crumbling. It’s horrendous,” Mr Lawrence said.

But the NT government says it is working hard to reform the youth justice system.

“Our youth detention system is not what it was in 2016,” Territory Families Minister Kate Worden said. “We are building a new purpose-built facility in Darwin and refurbishing our Alice Springs facility.”