A juvenile detainee escaped from Darwin’s Don Dale detention centre on Wednesday night by exiting through an emergency door and climbing over the fence, injuring himself on razor wire.
A vehicle patrol was dispatched “within minutes”, and police were on the scene within seven minutes of being alerted but the child was not found.
The 17-year-old, who was not identified by Northern Territory Corrections, escaped half an hour after he was brought into the juvenile detention centre after midnight on Thursday.
“Youth justice officers had escorted him to the shower area within admissions and were processing his arrival whilst he showered,” the Territory Families department said.
“The young person then exited the building through an emergency exit door while the youth justice officers’ view was obscured by the reception desk.”
The boy climbed over the inner perimeter fence and then through four coils of razor wire in the outer perimeter fence. The department said he had been injured in the process, but it did not know how seriously.
A review into the episode will examine staff supervision practices and escape emergency response procedures.
The boy had been remanded in custody for breach of bail and failing to appear in court. He was due to appear at the Darwin children’s court via video link on Thursday afternoon.
In 2014 the juvenile detention centre was moved to what used to be the adult prison. The centre has been criticised, including by the Northern Territory royal commission into the protection and detention of children, for its harsh infrastructure and environment.
The commission recommended the centre’s isolation block, the high-security unit, be closed immediately, and the NT government submit a plan within three months for closing the entire facility.
In the meantime the NT government is spending up to $2m to upgrade its fire management system.
The former Don Dale, which was closed because of to its degraded suitability to house an increasing number of detainees and growing proportion of female detainees, was purpose-built for juveniles and did not have razor wire around its perimeter.
There have been several escapes and attempted escapes from the centre, some of which have led to detainees being injured on the wire.
Josiah Binsaris and Trey Mawson, both 17, escaped in April, after a “litany of failures” at the centre, including a T-shirt left hanging over the fence from a previous escape, and staff failing to notice that the two were missing for 45 minutes.
The pair stole or carjacked several vehicles and led police on a lengthy and dangerous car chase across the territory. They were rearrested after a car accident which injured a young accomplice.
A few days later two young girls tried unsuccessfully to escape. In November four boys attempted to escape using pliers they had taken from a workshop training session.
Extra razor wire was added to the facility after the April 2017 escape, which the royal commission said in its final report added to Don Dale’s “grim, prison-like conditions”.
At the time of the commission’s report release in November, there were 35 detainees inside Don Dale, including 23 on remand and six children under the age of 14.
