Juvenile detention centres and prisons in the Northern Territory have become “de facto mental health facilities”, the former Northern Territory corrections commissioner Ken Middlebrook has told the royal commission.
Appearing for cross-examination on Friday afternoon, Middlebrook also answered further questions about his actions authorising the use of teargas against detainees in August 2014.
Middlebrook was taken through a number of distressing incidents involving juvenile detainees threatening or carrying out self-harm in detention. He defended the use of the restraint chair as a response in some cases, despite saying on Wednesday he wasn’t certain at the time that it was lawful.
Middlebrook had already provided extensive testimony on the lack of resources provided to juvenile corrections during his time as commissioner and he said there was little else available to deal with a distressed detainee in the middle of the night.
“It’s very difficult to get those professional services but where are they? They’re not in the community and one thing I hope the commissioners achieve out of this is to make sure the government gives the appropriate support for young people,” he said. “Try and get those supports at 2 o’clock in the morning or even on a Saturday or Sunday, it’s just not there.”
He said detention centres and prisons had become “de facto mental health facilities”.
Middlebrook also told the royal commission he wasn’t aware that a detainee who got out of his behavioural management unit cell in August 2014 was asking to talk to a youth officer before guards teargassed him.
He said he didn’t hear on the night that the child had asked to speak to youth justice officer Ben Kelleher but was refused.
“If I’d have been told that, I would have made that happen, I would have facilitated that,” he said.
Middlebrook agreed it was “scandalous” and “disgraceful” that a youth justice officer suggested he would “pulverise the little fucker” if the 14-year-old detainee came through a window – as was caught on footage and reported by the children’s commissioner.
Middlebrook said he didn’t know who that officer was and didn’t try to find out.
“Why didn’t you find out and show them the door?” Lawrence asked.
“When you haven’t trained them and you haven’t prepared them well, I think we had an obligation to fix the entire system and that’s what we were trying to do,” Middlebrook responded.
It “may well have been” a failure on his part but Middlebrook said it didn’t demonstrate “systemic abuse for years” inside the centre, as suggested by the boy’s lawyer, John Lawrence.
Youth justice officers were responding to instances of behaviour and “the same group of hardcore young individuals” were causing a lot of the problems, he said. They weren’t equipped to deal with these offenders, he said.
“My response to this was the get the Vita report so that I could put a report to government to say you’ve got to fix this.”
He said he wasn’t happy to use teargas but he had no other choice in how to to resolve the situation. He said he was concerned the detainee would knock out the power and the lights would go off.
On Thursday the former minister John Elferink said he had commissioned the Vita review because he had conflicting assessments from the children’s commissioner – who agreed with him that some acts by guards during that night appeared to be criminal – and Middlebrook, who told him appropriate steps were being taken.
Middlebrook was also questioned about allegations by the then children’s commissioner, Howard Bath, that staff gave false information and affidavits during a police investigation into a guard’s alleged abuse of a detainee and sought to prevent police obtaining CCTV footage of an incident.
“I don’t think the staff were trying to cover something up,” he said. “If they were, they could have easily erased that footage.”
Middlebrook’s cross-examination followed an appearance by the former NT chief minister Adam Giles.
Giles was unable to answer questions about key details relating to youth detention policy, the conditions inside facilities and incidents.
He told the commission he “could not recall” more than 60 times and defended his decision to not provide a written statement or documentation to the commission.
Giles said he hadn’t read a number of key reports into juvenile detention and that no one had brought specific concerns to him about the state of facilities in Darwin in Alice Springs, or the treatment of detainees by guards.
Thursday heard from Elferink, who also could not recall receiving briefings on several key reports into the state of detention but said he was aware of the general issues.
He said he was “disturbed” by the state of detention when he became minister and sought to make improvements to conditions but did not receive financial support from his cabinet.
