The NT Royal Commission

in Darwin's don Dale Use Detention Center. Probably most memorable for people listening who saw that four Corners and the following news reports was the Atanamo Bay style shackling and hooding of Dylan Vola and also the abuse captured on CCTV that showed the guards mistreating young, predominantly Aboriginal children,

and it was vile. Abuse these children were being subjected to included beatings, being stripped naked, being tear gassed obviously, the hooding and the shack clean the denial of food, water, medication, the constant harassment. It included sexual assault. Sexual abuse included the filming of both boys and girls while they were

in showers. I mean, we're talking about criminal acts. And what's interesting this week is with the recommendations finally being handed down of this Royal Commission, is that the vast preponderance of human rights organizations were quick to welcome the findings of the Royal Commission and urged that these recommendations be implemented immediately as a way of ensuring that these

abuses don't occur again. What you'll hear from me in this podcast is a rejection of what virtually every human rights organization in Australia has called for, and what they're calling for is the implementation of the recommendations. And I'll read you those key recommendations first before I go into detail why these recommendations will not change a thing. Firstly, the commission recommended that the age of criminal responsibility be

raised from ten to the age of twelve. It also recommended that only allowing children aged fourteen to be detained for serious crimes. It spoke about establishing a network of family support centers to provide place based services to families across the Northern Territory, a shift in youth justice to increase diversion or therapeutic approaches, developing a new model of

bail and secure detention accommodation. And it called for increasing engagement with an involvement of Aboriginal organizations in child protection, youth justice and detention. Now, on the surface, what you're probably thinking is these all sound like good recommendations, and I will briefly detail in a moment why I believe they're not and the evidence for this. But what I first want to say is about some of the things

we know about juvenile detension in Australia. The abuses that we've seen are not confined solely to the Northern Territory. This just happens to be somewhere where these abuses were caught on CCTV and the whistle was blown and it was exposed in one forty minute episode of Four Corners.

To think you can expose the entirety of the problem of youth justice in Australia in just forty minutes exposing just one news detention center is naive at best, and unfortunately the reaction of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to call a Royal commission the following day was to simply look at the Northern Territory. It should have been nationwide. Do we really believe these exact same problems don't exist in Queensland, Wa,

South Australia, Victoria, the Northern Territory, all over Australia. In fact, right now the Victorian government is completing one of the largest juvenile detention facilities in the country and it looks exactly what you would expect a maximum security prison for adults to look like. This is totally unacceptable and it goes to the initial shortfalling of the Northern Territory. Royal Commission in only focusing on one territory and not the

entire country. Now, what we also know is that in Australia juvenile detention has been failing young people for decades and decades. We've seen and heard of horror stories of facilities around the country being closed over the years because of the abuse that has gone on in these facilities.

From New South Wales to Western Australia. Children as young as ten have been beaten and abused, sexually assaulted and tormented, bullied and bashed, denied medication, withheld visits from their family, denied access to education, denied access to medication they've been prescribed by their doctors psychological services. So once again this

is not just the Northern territory. And again for human rights organizations to be calling for the implementations of these recommendations to be put in immediately and that this would fix the problem, and that we must be vigilant to implement these recommendations is to suggest that somehow a utopia can be achieved and somehow these recommendations are worth the paper they're written not. They're simply not, and they're not because they don't address the generational issue. The juvenile the

tension has caused. We know about the recidivism rates that lead to the young people who go through this system ending up in adult prisons. But what's much much worse is that we know the trauma and abuse rates that the children who end up in juvenile dettension have faced before they ever end up in court in the first place. Should we be detaining children who have been victims of abuse?

They may have committed small crimes. The most serious of the crimes alleged against any of the individuals shown in this report was serious assault. Now, no one is ever condoning serious assault or any of the crimes committed. But remember these were committed by children. Most of these crimes were committed around the ages of ten to fourteen, and

this exposed them then to the system. You're talking about children who are already victims of severe abuse, who may have been exposed to drug and alcohol very early on, of witness shocking level of domestic violence, who often come from underresourced communities and localities where their schooling is unacceptable, where the level of care provided by the government to their community is unacceptable, where children with learning difficulties, with

severe health problems fall through the cracks on a daily basis, Is it any wonder a certain percentage of these children end up committing what are quite frankly, for the most part, minor crimes. And then that same society that has routinely let these children down, who for so many of these families, has let them down for generations, then has the nerve to detain these children, And that these recommendations now talk about a new model of bail and secure detention accommodation.

Secure detention accommodation. Is that a recommendation we should be supporting. One of the main key recommendations that human rights organizations are getting behind is the call for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from ten to twelve. Think

about the stupidity of that statement. Is a child the age of twelve any better placed to cope with having been in a situation of experiencing abuse and violence themselves, of having been failed by the school system, the health system, their communities, being failed, having possibly witnessed domestic violence in their home, having been abused and assaulted by police, and targeted by police, many suffering undiagnosed mental health issues, learning difficulties.

These children are seeking help they're seeking attention. They're trying to get that help by raising attention about the problems they're facing. And because they're ten, eleven, or even twelve, the way they seek that out is often through what society calls misbehavior. This is not misbehavior. Society has failed

these children. These children are not failing society. Is a twelve year old capable of being criminally responsible having gone through everything we know these children have suffered prior to ever seen a courtroom. Is the age of ten to twelve really that different? This is not just the recommendation of the Royal Commission. What human rights organizations, supposed experts who should know better are saying should be implemented for

the betterment of these children. This is ridiculous. Now I want to explain some of the reasons this is ridiculous. And Australia has a shocking track record on juvenile justice, and it's particularly shocking when it comes to dealing with Aboriginal and torrestraight islander peoples. You would have thought a Royal Commission that had tens of millions of dollars available to it would have been able to look at what's world best practice, what are other countries doing that aren't

failing their children so poorly. If I had tens of millions of dollars available to me, I know that I could seek out some of these answers. We know that people like Debbie Kilroy from Sisters Inside routinely speaks and writes and talks about what some of the solutions are, and the solutions were not contained in the recommendations. Now, I want to talk about a country in Europe, the country of Belgium, and how it deals with the issue

of the youth justice system. And what Belgium does is that it divides the responsibility for youth justice between the national government and local communities and they share a responsibility. It's not broken down into states and territories or as you might have in the United Kingdom in counties or things like that. It's the federal level and the local

community level. And one of the things this recommendation by this new Royal Commission failed to do in Australia was really recommend that it be tackled by the federal government. So when did Belgium begin this process of realizing they had a problem. Was it fifteen years ago, was it thirty years ago? No? It was in nineteen sixty five, two years before Australia even decided to include Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander people as part of the population. And in nineteen sixty five the Parliament of Belgium introduced the Youth Protection Act. And the Youth Protection Act has one main focus, and that is about establishing a rehabilitive framework for those children who find themselves facing juvenile justice. It's about avoiding court as much as possible and it puts the onus on the government and local communities, not the children.

The purpose of what they call the YPA the US Protection Act is also to look long term and it analyzes the needs of the child's future welfare, the child's protection and education, rather than punishing that child for their

prior offenses. Now, think about what we've heard in recommendations that everyone has read and seen over the last few days, that a shift from ten to twelve for criminal responsibility, only detaining children in these centers in Australia once they're fourteen, developing more secure detention accommodation, increasing the involvement of Aboriginal

organizations in youth detention. So when does Belgium act and consider that the incarceration of a child is even on the table, not until the age of eighteen, not ten or twelve as we have in Australia, not fourteen, but eighteen. And think about the other words they don't use, whereas we say detention, detention, detention. The YPA has three key categories that must be fulfilled future welfare, protection and education

protection not detention. What the Belgium system recognizes is that these children have been subjected to abuse, both inside detention and often outside of detention. But these children and have been let down by the education system, and that's why education is one of the three key factors that these children have often been filed by the state in terms of their welfare, their health, their schooling, their mental well being,

their access to language and culture. And what is the first principle of the YPA in Belgium the youth's future welfare. It takes what's happened, often being the crime having been committed by the child, understands why that took place, does not punish the child for this, but looks to give

them a brighter future, to protect them and to educate them. Originally, there was a mistake in the YPA, which allowed for children who had committed the most heinous of crimes to be sanctioned for life to prison for life, and that was overturned many many years ago in the early nineteen eighties. This is something Australia hasn't caught up to in twenty seventeen, nearly forty years later. What it's now done is prohibit any of these life sentences being handed down to children

who are even seventeen. We're talking about raising that age in Australia to fourteen. The other thing it does is that it limits prosecutors' options when they go to court with a juvenile defender. The options they're given as a prosecutor are only four and this is designed to make

it very simple to understand. And the other aspect is that youth in Belgium by law, must be granted free legal representation, not legal aid, where there is limits placed on it in terms of the monetary cost, where you have legal services who are overburdened with the number of clients they're taking on, who operate on limited budgets, where the child does not get to choose a lawyer like every adult would if they were given a chance and had the money to choose their own lawyer. It doesn't

punish the child for being poor. It gives the child a lawyer who is best suited to that child's circumstances and who is not capped on an amount of money. Meaning they're meeting the child at the front of the court ten minutes before they go into the courtroom. And so what happens is the prosecutor is on a level playing field. It is not the weight of the state versus a child and a limited resources legal aid defender.

It's a lawyer acting on behalf of the state who has to ensure the future welfare, protection and education of the child, and the defender of the child who has to ensure that this is tailored for that individual child. So the four options that the prosecutors are given are simple.

They can dismiss the charges altogether. That is, they can say a child of under eighteen can make a mistake, should not be punished, the crime was not that serious, and that there is no need to even expose these children to the court system, let alone the inside of a detention versus facility a jail. The second option they have is to send the child to special youth service

and what these special youth services do. Again, again, this avoids court and it addresses with the use of social workers and youth workers the personal needs of the child and the family's need so that they can address the issues. So if it's a child with a learning difficulty, that

these can be addressed. If it's a child that suffered trauma, a child who is not receiving acceptable schooling, a child who is witnessing domestic violence in the home or is exposed to drug and alcohol use, that both that child is assisted and that their family is assisted. It understands

that children come from family units. It doesn't make any judgment about that family unit and what that unit comprises simply states that both the child and the family need assistance and tailored assistance for that child to ensure that they don't get into trouble again, to ensure their future

welfare is sound. The third option, now remember there's only four, and so far we have not seen a punitive option on the table for the prosecutor in Belgium, is that the prosecutor can order alternative sanctions, and what that means is once again the child is referred to the special youth services, but that the child's family is mandated by

the prosecution's offers to attend. Now, this can be crucially important where children are being let down by their own family, where children themselves are doing their very best, but perhaps mum or dad has a drug or alcohol issue, Perhaps there's domestic violence in the home that's preventing one of the parents assisting the child to the best of their ability.

Perhaps there's an inability of the family to provide enough so that the child can attend school, and that this has repeatedly occurred and the child is continually falling through the cracks. So all this does is mandate that the family must go to the youth services and that they must cooperate with the youth service and work together. The final option is that the juvenile may be referred to court, and the only court they can be referred to is

a youth court. Now, in only twenty percent of all offenses by juveniles did the matters end up in youth court. Eighty percent of the time when children were charged with a serious crime, the three alternative measures were taken. Since the year two thousand, those formal charges were dismissed on agreement.

In seventy percent of cases. So, not only do you only have twenty percent of children ending up in a youth court where a judge is required to intervene, in seventy percent of those cases, between the judge, the prosecution and the child's lawyer and representative, they were able to dismiss those charges. The child never had to go to juvenile attention, never had to have a charge on their record, and alternatives were found, usually going back to the three options.

Why isn't this what the human rights organizations in Australia are calling for? Why isn't this what we're seeking to do. Yes, we understand that there are some children who commit heinous crimes. We did not have children that were before the Royal Commission in the Northern Territory who were overwhelmingly charged with serious crimes. These were overwhelmingly petty crimes, crimes of small theft,

crimes of property damage. These are not children who belong inside prisons, and who certainly do not belong inside a prison that resent rules one ton of mobile. Overwhelmingly, what happens in Australia is that Aboriginal Entrostraight Islander children are targeted by the police just as adult Aboriginal Entirestraight Islander

people are too. Raising an age of criminal responsibility from ten to twelve does not change the fact that racism and the systematic chart targeting of a people will continue. It just buys the police two more years before they can intervene and do their dirty work. It just buys those corrections officers two more years before they can get their hands on children and abuse them. As we saw on tape and video. This is unacceptable. It was unacceptable

for Belgium in nineteen sixty five. It should be unacceptable to Australia in two thousand and seventeen. Now. I want to point out that Belgium is not perfect. Mistakes have been made in their system. They are moving now to improve the system and the model they've been working with because it was one that was implemented in nineteen sixty five. It is not a Navana, it is not a utopia, but it is a hell of a lot better than

the system we have in Australia. What the systems in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland show is that we don't need to just close don Dale. We don't need to just raise ages by arbitrary numbers. What is the difference between ten and twelve. These are children. What we need to do is close all of these juvenile detention facilities. Children do not belong in prison, Children belong in school, Children with drug and alcohol issues belong with drug and

alcohol counselors. The Royal Commission exposed that children were denied psychological services and denied medication that was prescribed to them for their mental health. You do not deny a child, or any citizen of this country or the world, the right and the access to the mental health services they need, and then tell us that you are rehabilitating this child.

You're not. This is pure punishment. And finally, I want to point out something that I think backs up this worse than almost anything else, and that's to go to the man who was the Corrective Services Minister at the time, and I won't say his name because he doesn't deserve to have his name mentioned. He states that the Royal

Commission has vindicated him. So the human rights organizations in Australia calling for these recommendations, this lifting of the age from ten to twelve, more consultation before a child is detained, making detention centers more secure, whatever that means, are agreeing with the man who oversaw all the abuses that you

witnessed on four corners. You should not have human rights organizations who are supposedly speaking for the benefit of these children in agreement with the very man who oversaw the

abuse of these children. This highlights just how weak and absurd and what crap these recommendations are, and why the these problems will continue until we take a serious look at the situation we have in Australia, until we take a serious look at what is world best practice, and until we start to work with communities on the ground. None of these experts I saw this week on TV

ever attend communities, nor belong to them. They sit in fancy officers in the cities, paid large sums, just like the Royal Commissioner paid large sums, just like the former Corrective Services Minister who oversaw this abuse, and from on high they hand down these decisions, just as this fifty four million dollar Royal Commission has handed down this decision. Now, I welcome that this Royal Commission shone a spotlight on

the abuse that took place. I welcome that we know the name of children like Dylan Volla, and we've heard from deal one and we've seen him speak and talk for himself about the things he was subjected to while he was inside. And we've also seen him rehabilitate before our eyes, not while he was in Dondale, but when

he was back with his family and his community. But was his example used by the Royal Commission to show that being with loved ones, being embraced by your community, being allowed access to rehability of services is what helps and not being in prison. No, all we're talking about are raising ages, making prison facilities more secure and continuing this abuse. And these recommendations only relate to the Northern Territory. The rest of Australia goes completely unscrutinized. Kevin Henry was

sadly in juvenile attention too. Kevin Henry experienced savage treatment in juvenile detention. He was failed by the state and he was failed by the many guards who subjected him to that abuse and mistreatment. And now an innocent man, Kevin Henry is serving twenty something years for a crime he didn't commit. This is what happens when you get

it wrong for decades at a time. It is unacceptable that the calls for these lazy, half hearted, poorly researched, and what will often be poorly executed recommendations are put in place. We need a nationwide overhaul. State should be stripped of their power to detain children, and there needs to be packed between the federal government and local communities to work together for the future welfare, protection, and education

of all our children, not their imprisonment. That was curtin the podcast.