SYDNEY — On March 3, Legal Aid's Children's Legal Service convened a meeting to discuss the announcement by the Ombudsman's Office of a inquiry into serious allegations against management and staff at the Kariong Detention Centre. The centre is the highest security youth prison in New South Wales.
The allegations include institutionalised racism, human rights abuses by management and staff and possible breaches of the duty of care owed to detainees by the Department of Juvenile Justice.
The meeting's participants, including Legal Aid's Children's Legal Service, Many Rivers Aboriginal Legal Service, Sydney Regional Aboriginal Corporation Legal Service and the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, have called on the NSW minister for juvenile justice, Faye Lo Po, to close Kariong immediately, pending a full independent inquiry.
Given the serious nature of the allegations, the meeting's participants didn't consider an inquiry to be enough. "It was the overwhelming view of the meeting that the situation was likely to worsen and that detainees would be placed in greater jeopardy unless immediate steps were taken to close the centre, relocate detainees to other appropriate institutions and conduct a thorough independent investigation into the matters raised", said Wayne Armytage from Many Rivers Legal Service.
Allegations raised at the meeting included:
- several serious bashings and assaults of youth detainees by staff at the centre;
- more than a dozen incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts over the past month, including some where staff have actively encouraged detainees to harm themselves;
- prolonged and excessive periods of isolation;
- psychological and physical torture and assaults; and
- illegal body cavity searches.
Justice for Young People and Justice Action supported the call for the centre to be closed. In a March 31 media release they said: "A basic entitlement as set out in the revised edition of Standards for Juvenile Custodial Facilities in Australia, and in the rules of the United Nations, is the right to an abuse-free environment, a basic right that the boys at Kariong do not enjoy. Instead they must deal with a culture of systematic abuse."
Justice Action quoted recent research by the Rand Foundation in the US which showed that $1 million spent annually on providing cash and other incentives for disadvantaged young people to graduate from high school would result in a reduction of 258 crimes per year; $1 million spent on training for parents and family therapy for families with "difficult" children would result in a reduction of 160 crimes per year; and $1 million spent on prisons would prevent only 60 crimes a year.