Complaints flooding the Department of Justice regarding Perth’s youth detention centre include female inmates alleging sexual behaviour and violence from guards.
Premier Mark McGowan said the figure was the result of early estimates of the damage caused by 49 detainees during a riot last week that lasted more than 14 hours.
Experts expressed anger and shock at the premier’s comments that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder was used as “an excuse” for inmates’ actions at Banksia Hill.
Opponents have accused Premier Mark McGowan of using the troubles at Banksia Hill Detention Centre as a ‘political football’,with his rhetoric on the issue changing dramatically after winning two elections.
We all agree on the fundamentals of the path forward to fix this crisis,it’s only the McGowan government who fails to grasp that our treatment of children in prisons belongs back in the 18th Century,writes Sophie Stewart.
More than half of the 90 detainees at Banksia Hill Detention Centre escaped their cells on Tuesday evening and rioted – some lighting fires,others hurling projectiles at staff and police from the roof.
The Department of Justice acknowledged the incident but did not reveal that a detainee had managed to make physical contact with the female population at the detention centre.
The teenager who killed a pregnant Perth mother Diane Miller when he ditched a lump of concrete at her through a car window has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
The centre has been under scrutiny with revelations of staff using hog-tying techniques on inmates,unacceptable lock-downs and prolonged solitary confinement plus riots plaguing the centre in recent months.
“We do have records of out-of-cell hours but a lot of the time we can’t actually,hand on heart,say they were 100 per cent accurate,” director-general Adam Tomison said.
By the age of nine,says this insider,many of these most vulnerable children are disengaged. By age 15,half of them are no longer coming to school.