The new Don Dale youth detention centre in Darwin was run like a “human storage facility”, the author of a review of the Northern Territory corrections system has told a royal commission.
The royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the Northern Territory launched its latest public hearing on Monday, beginning with evidence from Keith Hamburger, the former head of Queensland Correction Services Commission and author of a highly critical report on the NT corrections system.
The royal commission also refused an attempt by the NT government solicitors to have parts of Hamburger’s official statement excluded from the commissioner’s examination.
Hamburger, a consultant for the corrections and immigration detention sectors, volunteered his services to the government after reading about the government’s plans for a “root and branch review” of the juvenile detention system.
He said he had no dealings with the former chief minister Adam Giles, former attorney general John Elferink or corrections and police commissioners before he made his offer.
Following a now infamous disturbance at the original Don Dale centre, in which six youths were teargassed by staff, juvenile detainees were moved to the former adult prison at Berrimah, which the corrections commissioner had labelled only fit for a bulldozer, but which underwent refurbishments and was renamed.
The teargas incident and further alleged mistreatment of detainees aired by the ABC’s Four Corners in July sparked the royal commission.
Hamburger and his review staff visited the new Don Dale centre more than once, he told the commission, and his response was “disappointment, frustration that such a facility in this day and age exists for young people”.
Hamburger said the current Don Dale was run like a “human storage facility” and there was no way it could be turned into what was required for a modern therapeutic youth correctional centre.
“It’s ambience was very poor, it’s basically a prison, young people are kept in concrete cells,” Hamburger said of the refurbished centre.
“There’s evidence of lack of privacy for young people. I got the feeling it was a guarding environment, not therapeutic environment.”
Hamburger said he also saw evidence of previous disturbances, including holes gouged over a long period of time into concrete walls inside the isolated behavioural management units.
“What that means is the staff aren’t really in attendance and supervising young people,” he said.
“It also seemed to be a culture where the supervisor sat in the control room and watched things through CCTV cameras rather than going to interact with young people.”
He said his review found refurbishments of the recreation areas were “quite good for what it was”, but concluded in his report that “accommodating youth offenders in a facility that was condemned when it housed adult prisoners is unacceptable, and nothing will make the old Darwin correctional centre suitable for youth offenders”.
Hamburger’s report, which was required by 31 July this year, has repeatedly been at the centre of controversy.
Giles reneged on repeated pledges to release it before the election in August, at which the Country Liberal party suffered a landslide defeat.
The new Labor government then released only the executive summary and recommendations, citing security and privacy concerns. After a copy of the full report was leaked to media the government released a version containing some redactions.
The report was highly critical of a former Labor government’s decision to commission a new 1,000-bed adult prison at a reported cost of about $1.8bn.
On Monday the commissioners refused an application by the solicitor general’s legal team, acting for the NT government, to have some parts of Hamburger’s statement excluded from consideration by the commission.
The paragraphs related to Hamburger’s investigation into construction of the adult prison, including that he was denied access to its “business case”. It also drew attention to part of his report looking at the NT’s “unacceptable imprisonment rate coupled with 85% of the prison population being Indigenous people”.
Given endemic social dysfunction and disadvantage related to both adults and juveniles it was “curious” that “decision-makers were prepared to invest a huge amount of money into a high security prison for adult prisoners but apparently gave no thought to the needs of juveniles caught up in the system”, he said.
The NT government lawyer also sought to have excluded Hamburger’s recommendations for better alternative approaches to a new prison, and his opinion that it was a lost opportunity to have an impact on Indigenous incarceration.
The NT attorney general, Natasha Fyles, told Guardian Australia she understood the objections were on “technical issues” and the solicitor general had been given “broad instructions” to cooperate with the royal commission.
Hamburger’s evidence was expected to run for more than a day. The commissioners, Mick Gooda and Margaret White, were set to visit various Darwin custodial facilities on Wednesday. Two juveniles who were at the centre of many of the mistreatment allegations were also expected to appear.
The commission has previously heard evidence of repeated government inaction on multiple reports and investigations into the state of the NT justice system, as well as contributing factors to incarceration such as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Allegations of mistreatment of juvenile detainees have continued to be aired in community meetings with the NT’s remote Indigenous population, including that an officer told a young boy to drink his urine after the boy requested a glass of water.
