On any average day in Queensland, more than 200 children are being warehoused in grim, demoralising concrete-box cells or centres furnished with little more than a thin foam mattress, blanket and an exposed silver metal toilet pedestal.
Many of them, as young as 10, can be left languishing, sometimes alone, in these austere and bleak conditions for an average stay of five weeks.
The bleak statistics are highlighted in the most recent figures released by Queensland’s Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women — which reveal that in 2017–18 an average of 210 children aged 10–17 were being held in custody across the state every night.
While a minority of those in detention are serving court-imposed sentences for proven offences, the vast majority are being held in high-security adult facilities such as police watch houses around Queensland.
Recent reports indicate up to 70 children are being held Brisbane’s Roma Street watch house alongside serious criminals — with one account of a young girl being held in a cell opposite a pedophile.
Queensland’s former Children’s Court judge Michael Shanahan confirmed the reliance on police to supervise children as young as 11 due a lack of appropriate accommodation to care for the young alleged offenders.
Judge Shanahan, in his annual report published in December, said it was a “travesty and a burden on the police service’’ to be called on to act as a fall-back for the severe lack of proper facilities and specialised care of youth offenders.
Queensland currently has 254 beds available to house children in two purpose-built youth detention facilities: Wacol’s Brisbane Youth Detention (in the city’s west) and Townsville’s Cleveland Youth Detention Centre.
The state government recently announced an additional $177 million had been approved to build a new 32-bed centre and update the current Brisbane facility to add a further 16 beds, but no indication or timeframe was given as to when those beds would be available.
Of those held in custody, more than 80 percent were being held on remand waiting for alleged offences to be dealt with by the courts. It also showed that, on average, children could expect to spend as long of five weeks in detention before being released.
However, the most striking statistic is the vast majority of children in detention — more than 150 (72%) a night — identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The times for which they are detained also vary from an average of 72 days while serving a court-imposed sentence to 36 days while on remand for alleged crimes — many of them petty offences.
The census figures also identify myriad diverse social, cultural, health and family disharmony triggers as contributing features to the children’s offending or turning to socially unacceptable and criminal offending.
They include:
- 52% Disengaged from education, training and employment
- 18% Homeless or in unsuitable accommodation
- 80% Used at least one substance
- 33% Young people in detention have used Ice or other Methamphetamines
- 58% Mental health and/or behavioural disorder (diagnosed or suspected)
- 17% Disability (assessed or suspected)
- 5% Were parents of young children
- 31% At least one parent of young offenders spent time in adult custody.
Queensland Youth Minister Di Farmer, in a statement announcing additional youth justice funding last month, said it was imperative that a multi-pronged support and strategy be put in place to curtail the offending rates long before and after a child is dispatched to a custodial facility.
“Our focus remains on reducing offending rates and preventing young people ever needing to be placed in detention,” Ms Farmer said.
“We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result — we need to invest in programs and initiatives which work.
“There is good evidence to show that these programs work to prevent re-offending.”
