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One of the Northern Territory's youth detention royal commissioners says it is "extraordinary" a new youth detention facility in Darwin will not be ready until 2021, almost four years after the inquiry delivered its findings.
Key points:
- Construction on a replacement centre will not start until next year
- The NT Government said projects as significant as a new youth justice centre required time
- There have also been renewed calls to raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 12
Margaret White, a retired Queensland Supreme Court judge, told the ABC it is upsetting that the controversial Don Dale facility remains open, close to a year since the inquiry found the current centre was not fit for purpose and recommended its closure within three months.
Construction on the NT Government's replacement centre will not start until next year, with it expected to be up and running by mid-2021, according to a government spokesperson.
"It seems to me far too long to wait," Ms White, who returned to Darwin with former co-commissioner Mick Gooda yesterday to give the 2018 Menzies Oration at the Menzies School of Health Research, said.
"You can put up anything if you like in a reasonable timeframe. I find that extraordinary, I don't know why it's taking so long."
Mr Gooda said the centre could be fast-tracked.
"I understand they're having difficulties working out the location for that facility, but once that's done we would like to see it move fairly quickly," he said.
"There are a number of recommendations that really went to the inappropriateness, not fit for purpose of the current facilities that we have in the Northern Territory for youth detention.
"I don't know which one would be worse, Alice Springs or Don Dale, but they're both pretty awful places and the quicker we can get kids out of those, the better."
The NT Government said a project as significant as the new youth justice centre required time.
"It is a complete overhaul of not just the infrastructure but also the youth justice model," a spokesperson for the Territory Families Minister, Dale Wakefield, said.
Isolation still being practiced
Despite recommending strongly against using isolation for children in detention, Mr Gooda said it is still being practiced.
"We understand there's still a high security block happening in there," he said.
"The other issue we hear is also how girls are treated in detention, and we've heard of occasions when there's one girl, all the boys have got to be locked down when the girl exercises."
The government spokesperson said isolation in detention has been banned since May this year.
On the same day about 250 corrections staff walked off the job in Darwin and Alice Springs, demanding more staff and better working conditions, Ms White lamented a lack of employees to deal with persistent problems of overcrowding and rioting.
"The staff need a break during the day. They don't have enough staff, so they have to lock the young people down so that the staff can take a half-hour break," Ms White said.
"That's just a terrible outcome, isn't it?"
Ms White also renewed calls for the NT and the rest of the country to raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 12, which was a key recommendation of the royal commission.
"No child under the age of 14 should be incarcerated except for the most serious of crimes," she said in her Menzies Oration.
"We're way out of step."
Currently the minimum age of criminal responsibility across all jurisdictions is 10 but Ms White pointed to a number of countries overseas where the limit is much higher.
The NT Government has committed in-principle to raising the age to 12 and has indicated it would introduce legislation next year.
Topics: prisons-and-punishment, law-crime-and-justice, youth, community-and-society, child-abuse, crime-prevention, darwin-0800, nt, australia