Senate Inquiry to investigate Australia’s children’s prisons amid allegations of ‘torture-like’ conditions
A federal inquiry into children’s prisons will investigate allegations of ‘torture-like’ conditions across Australia.
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Australia’s first nationwide inquiry into youth justice has been approved by the Senate to investigate allegations of ‘torture-like’ conditions in children’s prisons.
On Wednesday night the Federal Senate voted unanimously in favour of an inquiry into youth justice and detention systems across the country.
NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge called for the inquiry to put a focus on over-imprisonment of First Nations children and compliance of children’s prisons with international human rights obligations.
Mr Shoebridge said the inquiry would investigate the need for the Commonwealth to set “enforceable national minimum standards for youth justice”.
Mr Shoebridge pointed to the NT’s “notorious” detention system, where 98 per cent of kids locked up were Aboriginal Territorians.
His calls come in the wake of the suicide of a 17-year-old boy in WA’s Banksia Hill Detention Centre — the second in just two months — Queensland’s ongoing use of watch houses as children’s prisons, and a Commission of Inquiry in Tasmania which found systemic rates of physical abuse, sexual abuse and violence against kids.
Mr Shoebridge said the sweeping inquiry would investigate “the appalling torture-like condition in places across this country in jails for kids”.
The inquiry would be focused on finding pathways to get kids out of jail and “push back against the flow of increased incarceration”, he said.
The NT has the worst detention reoffending rate in the country according to the latest Productivity Commission data, with 80 per cent of kids locked up returning to a cell within 12 months.
In comparison Territory children in diversion programs have a 23 per cent reoffending rate, according to the NT Police annual report.
WA Senator Dorinda Cox, who also tabled the motion, said the “tough-on-crime” narratives did not address the high-rates of trauma and disability among incarcerated young people.
“These kids are complex. These kids have disabilities,” Ms Cox said.
The Federal inquiry comes almost seven years after the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory made 227 recommendations, including raising the age of criminal responsibility to 12, and banning spit hoods and restraint chairs.
The CLP government has pledged to lower the age of criminal responsibility back to 10, and reintroduce the use of spit hoods on children — despite criticism from human rights advocates.
As of last week NT Police said the operational ban on spit hoods remained in place, however Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said she was committed to getting rid of the restrictions.
She has previously said lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 would mean children and their parents “can be held accountable for their crimes”.
The CLP have been contacted for comment.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds has welcomed the Senate inquiry as a “critical step forward towards reform based on evidence and human rights”.
The Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee report will be due by November 26.
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