Huge jump in Indigenous children at Ashley Detention Centre

An unsettling spike in the numbers of Indigenous children locked up at Ashley Youth Detention Centre has prompted an urgent call from a local Aboriginal leader.

• Tasmania Police reveal three racism complaints in past three-and-a-half years
• Aboriginal community leader Michael Mansell welcomes Premier’s fresh approach

TROUBLING new statistics have revealed that Aboriginal children and teens are being locked up at Ashley Youth Detention Centre at four times the rate of non-Indigenous Tasmanian kids.

Tasmanian Palawa man Rodney Dillon, Indigenous advisor to Amnesty International, said about six Aboriginal minors were currently incarcerated at the facility.

He said while that didn’t seem like a lot, the numbers were in fact high for the state and proportionally represented the biggest jump in Indigenous youth incarceration nationwide over recent years.

The Sentencing Council of Victoria, in newly-released data, said the rates of incarceration for young Indigenous Tasmanians aged 10 to 17 increased from 29.37 per 10,000 young people in 2017-18 to 34.58 in 2018-19.

In contrast, only 9.4 non-Indigenous Tasmanian youth per 10,000 Tasmanian were incarcerated in the 2018-19 year.

Mr Dillon said the age of criminal responsibility in Australia needed to be lifted from 10 to 14.

“We know when a 10, 11, 12 or 13-year-old kid goes into the system, we know where they’re going to be in the future,” he said.

“We know that locking kids up doesn’t do any good.

“It’s the quicksand of crime, once kids get into it, they never get out.”

Aboriginal-led justice organisation Change the Record said Indigenous children were being “stopped by police, put in handcuffs and thrown into police and prison cells” at rates that far exceeded those of non-Indigenous youth.

“Our children deserve the same support, care and opportunities as every other child – and they don’t get that from inside a prison cell,” co-chair Cheryl Axleby said.

“We have heard reports of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care as young as 12 being issued with fines for breaching social distancing orders. This kind of aggressive, punitive ‘tough on crime’ approach to our extremely young children is both absurd and deeply harmful.”

The Council of Attorneys-General is being urged to consider the issue of raising the age of criminal responsibility at its next meeting on July 27.

Follow @ambervwilson