Proposed legislation in the Northern Territory to ban routine strip searches and solitary confinement in youth detention centres is a “landmark” move that would leapfrog it ahead of other Australian states, the Human Rights Law Centre has said.
Last week the NT minister for Territory Families, Dale Wakefield, introduced an amendment to the youth justice act, limiting the use of force and restraints in the youth detention system.
It formed part of the NT government’s pledge to reform youth justice following the damning findings of the royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the NT, including the “overt punitive culture that permeated our youth detention facilities”, Wakefield said.
“The amendments in this bill are based on evidence that overly punitive measures in youth detention are counterproductive and, on the contrary, contribute to further, more serious offending.”
The previous NT government had been criticised for its legislative approach to restraints, including broadening the definitions and increasing the discretion of superintendents to use them.
Last week’s bill would remove much of the superintendent’s discretion to approve the use of force, by removing the “catch all” justification of “maintaining good order”.
“A major lesson from Don Dale was that children are at great risk of mistreatment when governments give prisons too much discretion,” said Ruth Barson, director of legal advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre.
“We can see this happening right now in other states, where children are being harmed in solitary confinement or degraded through routine strip searches, simply because somebody has decided that this very subjective, catch-all threshold has been met.”
If passed by the unicameral NT parliament, the new laws would stop the “traumatic” practise of routine strip searches of young people when they first enter detention or come back from court appearances, and only allow it if there was real suspicion a detainee had contraband.
Barson said there were far less invasive and degrading searches that officers could do, rather than the “thousands” of strip searches that the NT royal commission found were conducted on children every year.
The reforms to solitary confinement were “landmark in Australia”, Barson said, and the new clearer definitions and restrictions would ensure children were not isolated in damaging solitary conditions of more than 22 hours a day without meaningful human contact.
“The way [the NT legislation] prohibited that practice – which we know risks causing irreparable harm – is saying young people can only be separated for a very limited amount of time and in that time they have to be provided with meaningful contact, with education, with substantial time outdoors, they have to be seen by a doctor, and there are no rolling orders.”
Other states frequently held child detainees in solitary confinement but used broad definitions and “doublespeak” to claim they did not, she said.
Banksia Hill juvenile detention has repeatedly rejected claims by Amnesty International and parents of detainees that they had been holding teenage boys in isolation for more than 300 days, in breach of international law.
“The WA government has gone on the record and denied the existence of solitary confinement in youth justice facilities,” Barson said. “I’d say if that is the minister’s intention – that no child in WA is held in solitary confinement – then she should amend the laws to make sure that’s what’s happening in practise.”
Barson said that once the NT bill was passed into law, the next step was ensuring it was translated into practise and accompanied by “cultural change” in the youth detention sector.
“It’s about making sure what was once a really punitive and permissive environment shifts in a really profound way.”
The NT government has accepted all but a few of the royal commission’s recommendations but has refused to guarantee funding of them. It has repeatedly called for the federal government to assist financially.
“It’s fantastic to see the NT go from laggard to leader,” Barson said. “All children in prison, irrespective of what state or territory they are in, must be protected from this type of cruelty.”
