By Jesinta Burton and Holly Thompson
Warning: this report contains the name and image of a deceased Indigenous person, with his family’s permission.
A major probe into allegations of serious misconduct following the death of teenager Cleveland Dodd at the notorious Unit 18 has cleared the staff involved, but laid bare the shocking conditions inside the controversial facility and the litany of “band-aid” fixes.
The 69-page report by the Corruption and Crime Commission, tabled on Tuesday, comes eight months after the 16-year-old became the first juvenile to die in custody in Western Australia.
Cleveland Dodd, 16, (inset) died after self-harming in his cell at the youth Unit 18 wing of Perth’s maximum-security Casuarina Prison.
Cleveland had threatened to self-harm eight times before trying to take his own life in the early hours of October 12, 2023, one week before his family chose to switch off his life support.
The watchdog found the failure to remove a piece of wet toilet paper on Cleveland’s cell camera, was likely to have played a significant role in his death — something that every single detainee had attempted in one way or another.
It also found that seven cells in Unit 18’s wing had ceiling vents damaged similarly to Cleveland’s, which he would ultimately use as a hanging point.
But it was satisfied staff did not ignore Cleveland’s threats of self-harm, nor was the acting unit manager negligent in turning away a building services contractor who arrived to fix the broken cell vent 24 hours before he tried to take his life.
While the CCC cleared the staff of serious misconduct, there were failures that amounted to breaches of the department protocol.
A juvenile detainee covering his cell camera with tissue paper at Casuarina Prison’s notorious Unit 18. Credit: CCC
But it did find the operation of Unit 18 in October 2023 posed a risk to both youth custodial officers and the young people in their care.
Unit 18 was repurposed as a juvenile centre in July 2022 after a series of incidents and riots at the state’s only youth detention centre, Banksia Hill, forced the government to split the cohort into two groups, with disruptive children sent to the prison wing.
The report laid bare the chaos unfolding behind the closed doors of the wing, with a nurse detailing harrowing self-harm attempts among detainees.
“Those kind of instances are — can actually be daily. Oh, there would be hundreds and hundreds of those,” the nurse said.
A journal penned by the nurse detailed assaults, riots and young people “fashioning weapons from the debris”.
Superintendent Doug Coyne told the commission he was shocked at the condition of the unit’s cells, something he claimed he had not seen in his 36 years of experience in custodial services.
One of the custodial officers, who was not named in the report, said it was “only a matter of time” before someone harmed themselves in the makeshift youth custodial wing, which they described as a “volatile place”.
“... No-one actually understands what it’s like to work there,” the officer said.
“Like, you know, it’s mentally changed me this place.”
Another told the commission almost all of the cells were defected, having been cleaned, rebuilt and broken within hours.
“It was just – it was just like a band-aid. Everything was just a band-aid. It was just spot fires consistently at Unit 18,” the officer said.
An acting senior officer told the commission he had been stabbed four times and assaulted on dozens of occasions during his employment at Banksia Hill, highlighting that while the safety of young people was important, staff were concerned for their own, too.
The Commission stopped short of making recommendations to the Department of Justice, diverting to the Coroner overseeing the inquest into Cleveland’s death.
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