Prisons watchdog says one of Western Australia’s largest jails breaches human rights

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Let's get more now on revelations a young girl spent days in a Northern Territory police watch house. Shahleena Musk is the Northern Territory's Children's Commissioner. She says the wider issue is the territory's low age of criminal responsibility and it should be raised.

Transcript

00:00It's deeply concerning to hear children this young ending up in police custody, let alone

00:08over periods of time beyond the immediate investigation of offence. I'm deeply distressed

00:16here in the Northern Territory having worked to try to raise the age of criminal responsibility

00:21from 10 to 12 here over many, many years of advocacy with community organisations, with

00:27experts, with people who've got lived experience in the system, about the dangers and harm of

00:35criminalising children that young. Much offending by children is impulsive, it's transient,

00:41rather than planned and habitual. Unlike adult offending, offences by children tend to be

00:46attention-seeking, public, unplanned and opportunistic. Where children continue to have ongoing contact with

00:53the system, it's largely linked to systemic, environmental and social factors, factors that

00:58are often outside of their control. Sadly, the same factors that can lead a child into the child

01:04protection system are the factors that can lead them into the youth justice system. That is,

01:09multiple adverse life experiences, including abuse, neglect, exposure to violence and severe

01:16socioeconomic disadvantage. And people may be surprised, but the vast majority of children in

01:21contact with the youth justice system, particularly in the ages of 10, 11 and 12, are children well

01:27known to the child protection system and subject to child protection orders. So these children have

01:33really been abused, mistreated, and they're the ones we're funneling through into the detention

01:38system in the Northern Territory. Yeah, I want to touch on the age of criminal responsibility,

01:43Charlene. It's been lowered to 10 for some time now since the country Liberal Party was elected on a

01:51platform of law and order. What has the effect been of that lowering of the age?

01:57The shorthand response is that we've seen a return of children as young as 10 and 11

02:02being arrested by police, proceeded against through the courts. Some are ending up in detention on remand.

02:10People might not be aware, but the minimum age of criminal responsibility is the age that governments

02:16have determined a child could be liable to be dealt with by the criminal legal system for alleged

02:21offending. In the Northern Territory, it's 10. In some progressive jurisdictions, it's either 12 or 14.

02:28And the minimum age worldwide is actually 14 years. So we're really out of step with international

02:34standards and international law. But what it means is children as young as 10 and 11 can be arrested by

02:41police, they can be handcuffed, they can be searched, strip searched, held in police custody, interrogated,

02:48hauled before a court, and then locked away in a youth detention facility. And this is against all

02:54the evidence of what we know that children aged 10, 11, and 12 really lack the emotional, mental,

03:00and intellectual maturity for criminal responsibility. And sadly, the evidence demonstrates that

03:05criminalising these young people only serves to really entrench the behaviours that we should

03:11be trying to change. So really, it goes against all the evidence of what works and actually leads to

03:18these children becoming entrenched and further involved in adult offending into their adulthood. So

03:25to me, it's against the evidence. It's not going to make our community safer, and it's only going to

03:29lead to more and more crime. And I want to ask you about the situation in Alice Springs at the moment

03:35for young people. The youth detention centre there was closed and young people were being flown to

03:42Darwin to be held in detention centres there. Is that still the case currently? And what does that mean

03:52for those young people being flown from Alice to Darwin?

03:56Yeah, so in the Northern Territory, we used to have two facilities for the detention of young people.

04:05Recently, the Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre had been renovated to be fit for accommodating young

04:10people to support their rehabilitation, connected to services and programs on the ground in Alice Springs.

04:17So these children could be connected to their families, communities, culture and other supports.

04:24What has happened since the change in government here is in order to accommodate the mass influx of

04:32adult prisoners across the correctional infrastructure, they've had to recommission this Alice Springs

04:39Youth Detention Centre that had been the subject of millions of dollars of work to bring it up to

04:45scratch for housing young people into a women's prison. And so what that means is Alice Springs or

04:53Central Australian children who are detained in custody are being flown to Darwin, they're being

04:58housed in the Holtz facility, 1500 kilometres away from their family, from their community, from their

05:04culture, from the supports that are there in Central Australia. And people may be surprised, but the vast

05:11majority are Aboriginal kids whose language, first language is not English. And we're really

05:19disconnecting them from people that speak their language, who they can relate to, and who they can

05:24gain at least those supports that they need to rehabilitate. So I'm deeply concerned we're sending

05:32children away and really impairing their prospects of rehabilitation.

05:38The Attorney-General Marie-Claire Boothby has said today that NARJA's suggestions that funding should

05:44be pulled from police is reckless and inflammatory, flagging that additional beds in prisons are being

05:50built to deal with the increase in people, including children, being imprisoned. What's your view or your

05:58reaction to that approach?

06:02I don't know if it's evident, but I'm quite distressed. I'm from Darwin, I'm Larrake on my

06:08mother's side and have worked in the youth justice system for decades in prosecutions and criminal

06:15defence. And for me, the territory that the evidence is all in, we lock up children at a rate three times

06:22more than anywhere else. On any given day, 100% of children in custody are Aboriginal kids.

06:28Many of them have unmet and complex, intersecting health, disability and mental health needs.

06:34Many of them are victims in their own right. Children have been failed by other systems.

06:40And it's just astounding that this has become the response. These children need help, they need support.

06:47If we've got any chance of trying to reduce the likelihood of further crime in our communities,

06:52then we should be seeing them as children deserving of rights, deserving of support, and able to be

07:00connected back to their community and culture, because youth prisons themselves are criminogenic.

07:06And there's a lot of evidence that shows that these children need treatment, they need therapeutic

07:12interventions. And the evidence all shows that you lock a kid up, the more likely they're to re-offend,

07:19re-offend more violently, and go on to offending in adulthood, particularly the younger they are.

07:24There's been research done across Australia that showed that children aged 10 to 12 who

07:29spent time in custody are re-offended within 12 months. And it was something like 90 odd percent

07:35of the kids come back. So it's just madness that we're going down the poor trodden path of relic

07:44jurisdictions to lock these kids up when we know that it goes against the evidence and only going

07:49to lead to further, further crime and broken lives.

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