NT Police have launched a criminal investigation into the allegations.

Don Dale Youth Detention Centre guards allegedly forced teens to fight each other, and eat bird faeces for social media postings.

Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre. Aerial photography of Darwin and surrounds.

DON Dale Youth Detention Centre guards forced teens to fight for their own entertainment, made one eat bird faeces for social media postings and threatened detainees with retribution on the outside, a former teen inmate told a youth justice forum Monday.

The new allegations come less than a week after a scathing report found young inmates were tear-gassed last August during a riot after they were held in solitary confinement two weeks longer than legally permitted.

NT Police told the NT News last night that they have launched a criminal investigation into a “number of allegations in relation to the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre”.

No further details were available.

The report into the tear-gassing also highlighted poor management practices and bad decisions exacerbated and provoked the riot inside the centre’s isolated Behavioural Management Unit. The report quoted a shift supervisor describing the unit as “inhumane” and “inappropriate for today’s thinking and mindset”.

The report also found there were “no meaningful attempts” by staff to find a peaceful solution. One example highlighted a teen who had escaped asked to speak to a named youth justice officer. Instead, a staff member, who knew tear gas was on the way, said to his colleague: “Yeah, don’t talk to him, he’s finished now.”

Six youths aged between 14 and 17 tore up their cells and equipment in a three-hour siege that only ended when the anti-riot team fired teargas in August 2014.

The teen inmate alleged at Monday’s forum that guards had encouraged fighting and eating bird faeces by offering chocolate and Coca Colas.

The allegations were revealed during the Northern Territory Youth Justice Forum, held by the Red Cross, NTCOSS and Northern Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency.

NAJAA CEO Priscilla Collins said the forum was meant to identify solutions for “issues we’ve got to today (that) are actually at crisis point.”

An earlier forum in June found other allegations of youths being stripped naked and put in isolation and other cases where they were locked in cells without proper ventilation.

Questions to Corrections Minister John Elferink over what steps the Government will take to address the concerns were not answered yesterday.