Don Dale centre should be closed, report recommends

Recommendation comes after discovery of disturbing conditions

The high security unit of Darwin’s Don Dale youth detention centre should be shut immediately and there should be a plan for closing the entire centre within three months, the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory (NT) has recommended.

The commission also called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 12.

The AU$54 million (FJ$85.61m) inquiry, which was prompted by ABC’s Four Corners report on the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, investigated conditions in the NT’s detention centres.

The programme highlighted the treatment of Dylan Voller, who was shown hooded in a restraint chair while in detention. Increasing engagement with and involvement of Aboriginal Organisations in child protection, youth justice and detention “We recognise some of what we are proposing marks a profound shift from past practice in the NT, but it is necessary as what has been relied upon to date has and continues to simply fail the entire community,” co-commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda said in a statement. They said their investigation had found “shocking and systemic failures occurred over many years and were known and ignored at the highest levels”. “Children and young people were subjected to regular, repeated and distressing mistreatment in detention and there was a failure to follow the procedures and requirements of the law in many instances,” they added.

They said the NT’s detention system “failed to comply with basic binding human rights standards in the treatment of children and young people” and that children

were denied their basic needs such as water while imprisoned.

The commissioners said their findings vindicated the decision of the Australian and NT governments to call for the royal commission.