Youth detention spend hits $47m high amid Territory government’s crime, bail crackdown

The figures show keeping a single Territory child locked up last financial year cost taxpayers $2464 per day after the government tightened bail laws.

The report showed the NT detained children at four times the national average, including at Darwin’s notorious Don Dale detention centre. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

Spending on youth detention in the NT has ballooned by almost $7m a year since the Territory government’s crackdown on youth crime began in 2021, reversing the longer term trend.

Figures released by the Productivity Commission reveal each youth detained in the NT in 2021-22 cost taxpayers $2464 per day, with the total cost reaching more than $47m a year.

That figure was up from the roughly $40m spent in the previous 12 months, which was down from a seven year high of more than $44m in 2018-19.

The increase in spending came on the heels of changes to youth bail laws which passed the NT parliament in May 2021, making it harder for youth offenders to get bail and introducing automatic revocation for “serious” breaches.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday Save the Children released a report into Australia’s youth justice systems labelling the NT one of “the worst offenders when it comes to violating the rights of children in youth justice facilities”.

The report showed the NT had Australia’s highest rate of children in detention at three times the next closes jurisdictions of Queensland and WA and four times the national average.

It found the use of adult facilities to detain children, as well as the use of excessive force and restraint were “identified as significant breaches of children’s rights”.

Save the Children chief executive Mat Tinkler said the global evidence base showed “that a rights-based approach to youth justice will lead to better outcomes for children, the community and governments”.

“The punitive and ‘tough on crime’ approaches of Australian governments are the opposite of this,” he said.

Protesters outside the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

“They punish children for being victims of underlying causes like poverty and inequality (and) poor access to education and family support, and lead to children cycling back into the system again and again.

“By adopting a child rights approach to youth justice, governments can improve how the youth justice system operates, leading to better outcomes for children and making communities safer.”

The report specifically singles out the Territory’s 2021 reforms of an example of “changes to legislative settings that undermine child rights”.

In doing so it highlights a letter from all fourteen Australian and New Zealand children’s commissioners and guardians to then Chief Minister Michael Gunner labelling the changes “regressive”.

“(They) signal a shift away from evidence-based policy approaches and directly unwind the implementation of key recommendations from the 2017 Royal Commission,” they wrote.

The report also gave the Territory “red lights” for bail and remand and detention practices, “with urgent attention needed on policing, sentencing practices and minimum age of criminal responsibility”.

But the organisation gave the Territory half a point for raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 in 2022, with the age due to rise in practice later this year.

Mr Tinkler urged all state and territory governments to invest in strengthening and expanding early intervention and diversion programs, saying “we know what works and what doesn’t”.

“Australia’s youth justice system is responsible for repeated, egregious breaches of children’s rights, often resulting in direct harm to many children,” he said.

“We are a nation that prides ourselves on giving everyone an opportunity to succeed, and yet authorities are setting children and young people up to fail.”

Territory Families Minister Kate Worden said the government was “making strong progress in line with the national objectives outlined by (the) Save the Children report”.

“We have made significant reforms to improve youth detention and have spent $250 million on the recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory,” she said.

“We have also made a significant investment in youth diversion programs and group conferencing.”

Ms Worden said the government was implementing a “new model of care to support young people in youth detention”.

“This model of care is the most contemporary in Australia and is designed specifically for the Northern Territory,” she said.