Footage has emerged of a 17-year-old in an adult prison being placed in what a barrister and youth advocate says is a “spit hood”, challenging Queensland government claims the practice does not exist in the state.
The footage, obtained by the Courier-Mail, reportedly shows an Indigenous teenager having the device fitted by Brisbane correctional centre guards in February 2013.
While the state government disputes the device is a “spit hood”, the case has prompted new calls for Queensland to abolish laws that treat 17-year-olds as adults, the only jurisdiction in Australia to do so.
Bill Byrne, the minister for corrective services, told state parliament on Tuesday the teenager had been fitted with a “helmet” used to stop prisoners injuring themselves.
The spit hood notoriously featured in images of a juvenile prisoner in the Don Dale centre in the Northern Territory, matters that will now be examined by a royal commission.
The Queensland attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, had previously said those images were appalling and “spit hoods ... are not used in Queensland” in juvenile detention.
The video was uncovered by the Prisoners’ Legal Service during an investigation into an excessive force complaint that was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence.
It was the boy’s first stint in custody of any kind. Queensland is the only Australian jurisdiction where 17-year-olds are treated as adults in criminal law, a practice critics say breaches the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Bill Potts, the president of the Queensland Law Society, said judges commonly commented on how “outdated and appalling” the state’s treatment of 17-year-olds as adults was when passing sentences.
“On 1 September next year we will celebrate – or, more appropriately, mourn – 25 years of treating children as adults in our prison system; how many more pictures of children in bondage do we need to see before the government acts?”
According to the Courier-Mail, prison reports suggested the boy was restrained with a face mask, body belt and handcuffs because he pressed the emergency intercom without reason for the second time in two days. He was reportedly left alone in the cell for an hour.
The director of the Prisoners’ Legal Service, Peter Lyons, told Guardian Australia the teenager alleged the guards had “made it quite clear” the device – which featured a clear visor covering the face – was being fitted to “teach him a lesson”.
“The suggestion that it was put on him for his own protection so he couldn’t injure himself – if you look at the entire video, it’s hard to justify it on the basis that he seemed to be an entirely compliant kid,” he said.
“The issue we have is really simple – we say that behavior of correctional guards shows they’re probably not really trained to deal with the juvenile.
“What they’ve applied is really an adults-only approach to trying to change that young fellow’s behavior. If he was in a youth detention centre that’s run properly, there would be doctors there, prison guards there, everyone would be better trained to adapt.
“I just don’t think it was the right thing to do.”
A former guard at the Brisbane correctional centre, Hans Anderson, told Guardian Australia spit hoods were never used in the prison and that the footage appeared to show a head protector used to prevent prisoners harming themselves.
The device differed from a spit hood in that “it doesn’t restrict their vision or their movement, the face is all open”, Anderson said.
Byrne said on Tuesday he had ordered the corrective services department to review the 2013 investigation of the incident.
“As this is the case for all prisoners, restraints and use of force is used only when it has been deemed necessary and sufficient warnings have been given.”
The Courier-Mail said the boy, who was in custody after being arrested for break and enters, armed robbery and car thefts, had earlier sworn at officers and kicked his cell door.
Previous prison reports described him as having “no respect or regard for other prisoners or staff” and “showing increasing signs of aggression” days before the incident, the newspaper said.
Michael Cope, the president of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, said the government was “dragging the chain” on removing 17-year-olds from prisons. He also called for an independent prisons inspector as in Western Australia and the UK.
D’Ath told the ABC on Tuesday she wanted to see teenagers removed from adult prisons, which was “the right thing to do”.
But weeks ago D’Ath said she had to consider how to guarantee the safety of younger juvenile detainees if the 50 teenagers in adult prisons were transferred to the same facilities.
She said there was “no fixed time frame” for the government to move on a “complex issue”.
Damien Atkinson, a barrister and chairman of the Youth Advocacy Centre, told the Courier-Mail: “The use of multiple restraints and abandonment of the juvenile while restrained and hooded amounted, in our opinion, to punishment unlawfully administered by the corrective services officers.”
Atkinson said: “The state government says we don’t put Queensland children in spit hoods. But here’s a child and here’s a spit hood.
“Everyone in the Queensland public treat 17-year-olds as children and they belong in the youth justice system.”
