More than 100 people attended a forum about Indigenous youth incarceration and education on August 8. Discussion focused on the links between the education system and skyrocketing imprisonment rates among young Indigenous people — dubbed the “school-prison pipeline”.
Aboriginal children and youth in detention
Protesters gathered outside the Queensland State Executive on December 30, angry at yet another incident of violence against an Aboriginal child in the custody of the state.
Denzel, an 11 year old boy, had been severely bashed in juvenile detention. His family is demanding an urgent inquiry into the state brutality, and that Denzel be released back to them and to safety.
Australia’s human rights reputation has been savaged in a new report by Amnesty International. The report is highly critical of Australia’s detention of Aboriginal children for minor offences.
The Amnesty report, A brighter tomorrow: Keeping Indigenous kids in the community and out of detention in Australia, focuses on the crisis of Aboriginal child detention. The report says rates of Aboriginal youth detention are higher now than they were 20 years ago.
Northern Territory Attorney-General John Elferink was at an Amnesty International debate at Charles Darwin University on June 15, defending the position that “tough love” was necessary to reduce youth crime in the NT.
As he was speaking, a 16-year-old was successfully breaking out of the Don Dale youth detention centre.
According to an ABC News report, this was the eleventh break-out from the decrepit detention centre since August last year — showing that “tough love” is not working.