Page 4136 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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rehabilitated as long as that system is functioning correctly. That is why we allow young offenders to go forward unhindered by a criminal record.
Unfortunately, when a youth justice system does not function the way that it needs to, the exact opposite can happen; instead of being helped through what should be merely a phase, kids can be seriously harmed by the system. Sometimes this leaves us with permanently wounded adults and sometimes it results in what the Harvard University’s report calls a deeply embedded identity. In other words, youth justice done poorly can become a training exercise for adult corrections. That is a tragedy.
Sadly, the ACT’s Labor-Greens government has a long and troubling record of significant failures in its delivery of youth justice. A 2005 Human Rights Commission audit of the former Quamby youth detention centre found a stream of worrying issues. Staff complained that they lacked access to adequate training and that understaffing was hindering the centre’s ability to function.
The Human Rights Commissioner found that detainees were experiencing long lockdowns where they were not let out of their rooms. She also raised concerns about the use of segregation in the centre, about the overrepresentation of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, and the lack of access to visits by family and so forth. In partial response Labor and the Greens determined to build a new detention centre that would help address these human rights concerns. Instead, these issues merely moved from Quamby to the new Bimberi Youth Justice Centre.
If we look only at what we know about Bimberi from 2019 we have complaints by staff about lack of access to adequate training, and I understand that the centre is again experiencing significant understaffing issues. This has, once again, led to long periods of operational lockdown with detainees sometimes spending up to 22 hours per day confined to their rooms. This has impacted on the provision of face-to-face educational services. It has also resulted in families sometimes being turned away from visiting their children.
Only four days ago the Barr government was forced to apologise to a 17-year-old Aboriginal girl after she had been held at Bimberi in isolation for two months. Two months!
Ms Stephen-Smith: The newspapers don’t need to understand isolation, but you bloody should after three years!
Ms Lawder: Point of order, Mr Assistant Speaker, I believe Ms Stephen-Smith has lost her cool and used unparliamentary language.
Ms Stephen-Smith: I apologise, Mr Assistant Speaker. I did indeed.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Thank you, Ms Stephen-Smith. Mrs Kikkert.
MRS KIKKERT: Whilst incarcerated this girl also had to suffer the indignity of her Indigenous artwork and publications being removed from her possession.
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