Page 3672 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 September 2018
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Understaffing has been a significant issue recently. When Bimberi has insufficient youth workers, the end result is that kids have to be locked in their rooms. There were a total of 34 of these operational lockdowns in the 12 months ended 30 June last year. Then in the next six months operation lockdowns surged to 95 in total. To put this into perspective, this means that children and young people in this territory’s youth detention facility were confined to their rooms on average once every other day during this reporting period.
Another significant concern has been this government’s failure to guarantee the personal safety of the youths who find themselves in detention. In the same six-month period when 95 operation lockdowns occurred at Bimberi, 10 assaults also occurred. Minister Stephen-Smith has previously stated that such violent incidents are simply what occurs every now and again when you have people like that together. I reject this position of surrender when it comes to vulnerable children and young people.
A 2016 report written jointly by the Australian children’s commissioners and guardians identified a number of factors that create opportunities for assault to occur in places of youth detention. Two main factors are inadequate staffing levels and lack of necessary training for staff—issues that this government holds specific responsibility for. Again, paraphrasing another Australian parliamentarian, if a government cannot guarantee the safety of a juvenile detainee then they are failing in their basic requirements as a government.
Poorly run youth detention centres unfortunately often turn into training grounds for adult corrections. Unfortunately, we do not have any clear or reliable data on how often this might happen in the ACT, though I do wish to remind the minister that in October last year she committed this government to working towards creating these data and assuring that the youth justice task force considers this issue as part of its work. For this reason and for the concerns I raised above, I therefore welcome any attempt to decrease the number of children and young people detained at Bimberi if a better solution is available.
This is an important point, and I consider this bill to be a very small step in the right direction. A number of forward-thinking jurisdictions around this planet have had enormous success in treating youth offending by moving away from traditional models of youth justice, no matter how well intentioned, in favour of more robust and thoroughly evidence-based approaches. One of the characteristics that these approaches have in common is an attempt to involve not just the offender but also her or his family and, where possible, the broader social network.
I note with some satisfaction, therefore, that the explanatory notes for this bill acknowledge that restorative justice processes may be tailored to include a young person’s community of care; that is, their parents, caregivers, support workers or family members. I respectfully suggest that such progressions not only may but most definitely should extend to a youth’s community of care. The best evidence-based programs to rehabilitate youth offenders all take a whole-of-family approach.
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