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‘Urgent’ reform needed after 10-year-old detained at infamous Don Dale
Australia’s children’s commissioner has urged the states and territories to raise the age children can be jailed to at least 14, after a 10-year-old boy was held in detention in Darwin’s infamous Don Dale youth detention centre for the first time in at least five years.
The Northern Territory’s Department of Territory Families said it was the first time a 10-year-old had been held in detention since a scathing youth justice royal commission handed down its final report in 2017.
The infamous Don Dale Detention Centre in Darwin.Credit: Glenn Campbell
The royal commission found “shocking and systemic” failures in the NT’s child detention system. It also found that children had been subject to verbal abuse, physical control, and humiliation.
The nation’s top children’s commissioner, Anne Hollonds, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that she was outraged a child so young was detained in the facility.
“I was absolutely appalled to hear that a 10-year-old was in Don Dale, even for one minute that would be appalling. I’ve been to Don Dale, I know what it’s like - it’s no place for a 10-year-old,” she said.
”It might sound like a small thing, a 10-year-old in Don Dale for three days, it is not a small thing. A ten-year-old should never be in a place like that,” Ms Hollonds said.
The boy had been held in remand for three days after allegedly committing offences while on bail, the ABC reported. Court documents showed the boy was accused by police of being part of a group of young people who stole a car to do burnouts on a school oval in Darwin, and allegedly stole junk food from several service stations, it reported.
The boy allegedly assaulted a service station worker by throwing a window squeegee at them, and held a knife over his head and pointed it at a worker, the ABC said, adding he had been released on bail, but was remanded in custody after police allegedly found him in the back of a stolen car.
The Department of Territory Families said it could not confirm the details of the report due to privacy restrictions.
The poor conditions at Don Dale led to a record $35 million class-action payout for an estimated 1200 children who were mistreated at the facility between 2006 and 2017 earlier this year, with the NT’s Territory Families Minister Kate Worden acknowledging it had left a stain on the jurisdiction’s reputation.
The Northern Territory’s Chief Minister Michael Gunner.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Despite promising to shut down Don Dale in 2017 the NT government has since announced it was spending $2.5 million to expand bail facilities at the site and at another in Alice Springs to accommodate even more youth detainees.
A monitoring report from the NT Children’s Commissioner found that staff shortages and a sharp increase in prisoners meant children at Don Dale were struggling to access basic services like health care and education.
It also found that some young people at risk of self-harm were isolated for up to 23 hours and 45 minutes a day while waiting for medical assessments.
Meanwhile, its annual report found that there had been a steady increase in the number of children entering detention over the past year. Some 96 per cent of all children in detention in the NT last financial year were Aboriginal.
Chief Minister Michael Gunner told ABC radio earlier this week that he expected more children to be held in custody after he passed controversial new youth bail reforms in May.
”Yes I think we were quite upfront at the time when we brought this in that the most likely initial outcome would be a spike in remand,” Mr Gunner said.
After the royal commission the NT government promised to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. Mr Gunner said he’ll introduce legislation before mid-2024.
But Ms Hollonds argued that news a 10-year-old had been incarcerated highlighted the need for “urgent action” to raise the age to the United Nations recommended 14 across Australia.
“We know that raising it to 12 is not acceptable. Based on the numbers of children in the last period we know that there were about 500 kids in detention, only 43 of them were under the age of 12,” she said.
The Herald and The Age revealed last month that the nation’s attorneys-general agreed to develop a proposal to raise the age to 12 but no commitments or time frames were outlined.
“The research shows that all that happens is these children are trained to become better criminals as adults, so we are using public money to actually train adult criminals. As a taxpayer, I have a problem with this,” Ms Hollonds said.
Federal Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has been contacted for comment.