Sites confirmed for new residential youth facilities as independent panel confirmed for review

Three live in facilities in Darwin, Alice Springs and Tennant Creek will ‘offer the courts options’ for sentencing youth offenders. Here’s what we know.

Sites for three new Residential Youth Justice Facilities have been selected, but questions remain about how they will operate to keep young people off the streets. Photo Nicholas Falconer

Sites for three of four new Residential Youth Justice Facilities have been selected in Darwin, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, but questions remain about how they will operate to keep young people off the streets.

It comes as an independent panel has been confirmed to carry out the government’s youth justice review, which will consider the impact of recommendations from the royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory.

The Darwin 16-bed facility will be at Yirra House in Holtze, which currently serves as a youth bail accommodation facility.

In Tennant Creek the Juno Centre will serve as an interim facility while the permanent site is under construction and the Alice Springs facility will be at Gap Road, in the CBD – both sites housing up to eight youths.

NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler said the new facilities would give courts options for sentencing. Picture: Liam Mendes / The Australian

A fourth Residential Youth Justice Facility is being planned for the Katherine region.

Chief Minister Eva Lawler billed the facilities as ‘live in’ to ensure that court sentences and orders are enforced, but would not confirm if or how residents would be forced to stay.

“This will provide options for the courts,” Ms Lawler said.

“The minister is able to make decisions around young people going into these places, but for that we will need to have the options for the court to sentence, and there will need to be legislative change around that.”

She said she hoped to see all of the facilities up and running by July, and relevant legislation would be introduced in the next parliamentary sittings in May.

Territory Families chief executive Emma White said up to 25 staff including teachers, therapists and health workers would help with the 24/7 operations.

Territory Families chief executive Emma White welcomed the facilities as helping to redirect young people from the criminal justice system. Picture: Fia Walsh.

“We really welcome the development of these new facilities,” Ms White said.

“It will add a not insignificant capacity in terms of the number of beds available, but also a different approach for young people that we identify early, and a good option to actually redirect them from becoming more ensconced in the criminal justice system.”

On Wednesday the government also released the terms of reference for its review into youth justice which will “examine whether our youth justice system fits today’s settings, meets the needs and expectations of young people and victims of crime, and keeps communities safe”.

Western Australian commissioner for Victims of Crime Kati Kraszlan will chair the independent review panel also made up by Darwin-based barrister Trevor Moses and chief executive of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) Catherine Liddle.

The panel will consider the impact of the implementation of the recommendations from the 2017 Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the NT.

The royal commission was scathing of human rights abuses suffered by young people in the Territory justice system, criticising punitive approaches and recommending reforms such as raising the age of criminal responsibility and more lenient bail laws.

A final report will be handed to whichever party is in government by November 30, after the NT election this year.