Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung independent Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe is calling for urgent federal intervention into the child prison system, after a 17-year-old boy died on August 30 in the Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre in Western Australia.
His death is the second death of a child in Western Australia in less than a year after 16-year-old Yamatji boy Cleveland Dodd died at the notorious Unit 18 in Casuarina prison, in October last year.
Thorpe said her heart is with the boy’s family and community and that “he should never have been in that cruel place”.
She has reiterated a call for federal intervention to close children’s prisons in favour of evidence-based alternatives focused on care and wellbeing.
She said WA Premier’s description of the boy’s death as “unfortunate” is a “shocking abrogation of responsibility”.
“These deaths are entirely avoidable, and the WA and federal governments are responsible … Their failure to act over decades has led to this, and will lead to more deaths if serious action isn’t taken. We must stop putting children into these brutal prisons. Shut them down.”
“This is not about a few bad jurisdictions or a few bad facilities. This is a national crisis.”
Anne Hollands, the National Children's Commissioner, presented a review of the youth justice system in Australia in late August. She called for a national approach focused on the human rights of children and noted that compliance with human rights obligations is a federal responsibility.
“Decades of research have emphatically found that being ‘tough on crime’ with kids is not the answer,” she wrote in The Guardian on September 4.
She said the key findings of the report are: for child wellbeing to be made a national priority; coordinated action on reform across Australia’s federation; and ensuring legislative change is based on evidence and human rights. She added that the services systems need to be “redesigned” to provide help for vulnerable children and their families “much earlier”.
Thorpe wrote to the Attorney General in February about the human rights violations taking place in child detention facilities across the country, but has still to receive a reply.
She wants the federal government to work with First Peoples and the health and community sectors to “create strong federal frameworks that hold the states and territories accountable and stop the abuse. They need to prioritise care, wellbeing and rehabilitation for children.
“The era of prisons, surveillance and policing of children must end. We must imagine a different future our children, one based in care.”