Calls for intervention after 11-year-old girl left alone in watchhouse cell

ABC NEWS (Australia)

North Australia’s peak Aboriginal justice group is calling on the federal government to intervene in what it calls an incarceration crisis in the Northern Territory. The concerns follow the revelation an 11-year-old girl spent a night inside an overcrowded police watch house.

Transcript

00:00Well, the NT's prisoner population has surged to unprecedented levels in recent months, largely

00:08driven by the NT government's hardline approach to tackling crime.

00:13Since the country Liberal Party came to power, the government has lowered the age of criminal

00:18responsibility from 12 to 10, and has introduced tougher bail laws for both adults and children.

00:26These policies are leading to an enormous rise in prisoner numbers, with about 600 further

00:32prisoners being locked up over the past seven months.

00:36The majority of these prisoners are Aboriginal people, and about half of them are on remand,

00:42so they're still awaiting to have their day in court.

00:45The problem has become so bad that there's not enough room in actual correctional facilities

00:51to house these prisoners.

00:53So we're seeing a situation where we've got prisoners crammed into police watch houses

00:58because there just aren't enough beds to house them.

01:01In one recent incident, an 11-year-old Aboriginal girl spent two days and one night locked up

01:08inside one of these watch houses in Palmerston, where she was kept in a cell by herself with

01:14the lights on 24 hours a day, hearing screaming from other prisoners who were being brought

01:19into the watch house.

01:20This situation has prompted Anthony Bevan, who's the chief executive of NAJA, Australia's

01:26Aboriginal Legal Service, to call for the federal government to actually suspend Commonwealth

01:32funding for NT police's remote policing and other justice-related operations, until the

01:38NT government changes its attitude and its approach to tackling crime, which he says hasn't

01:43actually reduced re-offending.

01:45Here's what Anthony Bevan had to say earlier.

01:48We're saying that if those funds are Commonwealth funds, the Commonwealth should be putting some

01:55conditions on the table to say we shouldn't be locking young kids up, we shouldn't be locking

02:00Aboriginal people up in record numbers, just because there's an election mandate.

02:06So, Sam, how have the Northern Territory and federal governments responded to this?

02:12Well, the NT's Attorney General, Marie Claire Boothby, has condemned these calls for a federal

02:19intervention.

02:20She's gone as far as labelling the comments as utterly absurd.

02:24In a statement, she said threatening to cut essential funding to remote policing is counterproductive,

02:30dangerous and undermines community confidence.

02:34She said there is no alternative.

02:36Those who break the law will be arrested.

02:38In response to concerns about the overflowing prison numbers inside watch houses, she said

02:43that the NT government is working to expand the prison system.

02:47She says that they expect about 238 more prisoner beds will come online at an adult prison on

02:53the outskirts of Darwin by about mid-August.

02:56As for the federal response, Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Malindiri McCarthy agreed with

03:02NAJA's characterisation of the problem and said that, you know, a police watch house really

03:09is no place for a child.

03:11And she also said that the reason why this is happening is largely because of the NT government's

03:15hardline approach to crime and these tough on crime policies.

03:18In a statement, she says there's something very wrong with the Northern Territory justice

03:22system when an 11-year-old girl is held in an adult police watch house for two days and

03:27one night.

03:28Senator McCarthy says she's aware of the issues and she's been talking to the Northern Territory's

03:32police union.

03:33However, she did stop short of joining these calls for a federal intervention.

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