Juvenile detainees have been moved from an Alice Springs detention facility after a number of escapes, and detained at Darwin’s Don Dale, from which there have been more than a dozen escapes in the past year.
The detainees are being moved 1,500km to Darwin, with no date set for their return, a move the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) has criticised as “retrograde”.
Ken Middlebrook, the Northern Territory corrections commissioner, told the ABC the Alice Springs centre was no longer safe or secure enough for the young detainees.
Last month three teenagers allegedly assaulted a guard, stole keys and escaped from Alice Springs. It was the 35th escape from Northern Territory custody since July 2014, a large proportion of which were from youth detention. The NT’s juvenile justice system has been repeatedly criticised for its poor security and treatment of young people.
At the United Nations on Monday numerous countries, including Norway, Mexico, Canada, Malaysia, Ireland and Kenya lined up to criticise Australia’s high rate of Indigenous incarceration, with many recommending reform.
The juvenile detainees will remain in Darwin until funding is secured to improve the Alice Springs facility, which Middlebrook said needed more classrooms, staff areas and a separate area for female detainees.
A spokesman for Middlebrook said male detainees who were remanded for seven days or longer were being moved to Darwin, with female detainees moved “as soon arrangements can be put in place”.
Ruth Barson, a senior lawyer for the HRLC, told Guardian Australia the move was a “retrograde step” by the government and corrections.
“If the primary purpose of detention – and it should be – is rehabilitation and reintegration of young people, then how is that possible if young people essentially can’t have any contact with their families and friends,” she said.
Barson said the lack of a timetable to return the young detainees to Alice Springs meant it appeared they would remain at Don Dale – formerly an adult prison – for the foreseeable future.
The attorney general and minister for corrections, John Elferink, told local radio the government was working on proposals which would be announced when they were ready.
The centre needed “a lot of work to be done on it”.
“If I’m of the opinion that the system in Alice Springs is insufficiently secure, then I’m going to move to protect Territorians in the first instance, whether these kids are juveniles or not,” Elferink said.
“Some of these kids are worse than they’ve ever been and we are responding to protect the community.”
Barson said Elferink was “entirely wrong on that” and “going about it the wrong way”.
“If the minister is actually committed to protecting the community he’d put in evidence-based policies, and look to jurisdictions like Victoria which have piloted programs successfully which foster rehabilitation and reintegration, rather than housing in a decommissioned prison,” she said.
“With youth justice in the NT, the policy seems to be a completely moving feast. They don’t seem to be consulting with civil society or expert organisations at all.”
Elferink earlier accused the criminal lawyer’s association – which shared the criticisms of Barson – of focusing on the rights of the offender and not on the rights of the victim.
Elferink denied the juvenile system was in a state of crisis, a criticism which has been repeatedly levelled at the NT government by legal and justice bodies, and by an independent review commissioned by the government last year.
The government had been playing catchup and dealing with “legacy items” left by the former Labor government, which was in power from 2001 to 2011.
Lynne Walker, the NT shadow attorney general, said the move was not to do with difficult detainees but was rather about a “system not working”.
“Young people in the justice system hold the best prospects for rehabilitation, but this is not possible 1,500km from home and family and the social and health supports needed to successfully turn their lives around,” she said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s not good enough for the minister for corrections to cry legacy issues. This is the one portfolio that has not had a revolving door of ministers as part of the CLP government’s own chaos.
“Minister Elferink needs to be accountable for this latest decision in a string of bad decision-making. Minister Elferink needs to explain what is really going on in youth justice.”
