Justice failed for decent, honest man
TWENTY-FIVE new youth justice officers graduated on Friday night and will soon begin work at the Don Dale and Alice Springs detention centres.
They will help fill the massive void in permanent detention centre staff that has existed for years. But the task of recruiting any more people to do this difficult job might be almost impossible, now that the public is aware of the disgraceful treatment of former Don Dale Superintendent Victor Williams. •••••• Last December Williams took Royal Commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda on a tour of the new Don Dale Detention Centre; the old Berrimah adult prison that has held youth detainees since 2015. As they sweated through the build-up heat, the commissioners were shocked by the conditions in the centre’s High Security Unit. Ms White questioned why there were no air-conditioners or fans in the stifling cells. Mr Williams replied that quotes were being sought, but that 95 per cent of the detainees didn’t have air-conditioning at home.
“Yes, but they can get out (at home),” Ms White replied.
The message sent to Williams was clear; this was no place to keep a human being, let alone a child, regardless of the nature of their offending.
Fast forward four months and Williams has been sacked, not for putting detainees in the HSU, but for failing to do so. It’s the latest injustice in a sordid affair that has seen the reputations of decent people destroyed and the bank balances of southern lawyers bulge.
Williams’ crime was to place dangerous teen criminal and serial escapee Josiah Binsaris in low security. Binsaris and fellow inmate Trey Maw- son escaped before going on a three-day crime binge that saw several police cars rammed, an accomplice in hospital with head and spinal injuries and a woman carjacked on the side of the Stuart Highway.
On the face of it Williams’ decision to keep Binsaris in low security would seem like a pretty dumb one. But let’s consider the options he had. A report released by the NT Government on Friday showed Don Dale’s medium security K Block was already overflowing with 13 detainees sharing an area with just nine beds. Most of those detainees were younger and there were concerns about putting Binsaris – who is almost 18 and of a strong and muscular build – with the younger detainees. So Williams was essentially left with two choices; put Binsaris in the High Security Unit which the head of a Royal Commission had told him was no place for humans, or put him in low security. Williams chose option B, a decision that has cost him his job.
On Friday, Territory Families deputy chief executive Jeanette Kerr – the bureaucrat who has been in charge of Youth Justice since last year’s election – announced Williams had been “transferred” from his position at Don Dale and was now on leave. She said this decision had been made because Mr Williams had not followed the “directive” on detainee classifications. That would be the same “directive” that saw six detainees – including Binsaris – locked in the Behavioural Management Unit at the Old Don Dale for 17 days, an incident that has been a major focus of the NT Royal Commission. Anyone following those proceeding would be aware of the grilling Youth Justice Officers have faced for following “directives” in the past.
Kerr, however, has managed to keep her job despite being unable to remember if she had visited Don Dale after a previous escape on March 21. The internal report into Binsaris and Mawson’s escape found major security failings at Don Dale. Among them, eight security cameras between the outside perimeter fences were not working, grass in this area was head-high allowing escapees to hide, and a blue t-shirt left behind during the March 21 escape was still covering a section of the razor wire. “Leaving the shirt hanging from the razor wire for a num- ber of weeks was like a beacon for those detainees walking past and in fact was likely to have been the chosen location by the escapees owing to the fact that the fence had previously been scaled at that point,” the report said.
In what can only be described as a train-wreck of a press conference on Friday, this exchange occurred:
Reporter: “Had you been out to Don Dale in the two weeks leading up to that incident?” Kerr: “No” Reporter: “How often do you visit Don Dale?”
Kerr: “Regularly, I’ve prob-
ably been there about a dozen times in the last six months.”
Reporter: “But not in the two weeks beforehand?”
Kerr: “I can’t tell you the exact time I went but when I do go I don’t always walk the perimeter.”
Reporter: “You’d never noticed the long grass?
Kerr: “Not in that location, no.”
Reporter: “Did you go and investigate after the previous escape when the t-shirt was left on the razor wire?” Kerr: “No I didn’t” Reporter: “You didn’t see the need to go out there and investigate that?
Kerr: “In hindsight, I should have, yes.”
But after the press conference Kerr changed her story, admitting she had visited the centre after the March 21 escape. Which leaves the question as to whether the former senior police officer who is now being paid a salary of close to $300,000 a year had noticed the t-shirt sitting “like a beacon” on the razor wire? Had she asked for anything to be done about the long grass? Was she aware of the eight faulty security cameras (presuming these hadn’t just malfunctioned in the two weeks between escapes)?
In response to further questions yesterday Ms Kerr confirmed she had visited Don Dale four times after the March 21 escape. Four visits she had been unable to recall a day earlier. But she had not inspected the area where a detainee escaped on March 21 and had therefore not seen the t-shirt that had provided the incentive for the subsequent breakout. She said she had made numerous requests for unkempt grass and gardens to be tidied and provided an email showing all but one of the CCTV cameras was working by April 5.
On Friday, Kerr was also unable to say who removed a position responsible for security compliance when youth justice was shifted from Corrections to Territory Families after the election. But rather than take the responsibility herself, she decided Williams had to go. ••••• A couple of weeks after the Four Corners report into NT youth justice, I spent a day with Victor Williams at Don Dale. He had been put in charge there in 2015 by former Corrections Commissioner Ken Middlebrook and tasked with implementing the recommendations from the Vita Re- view that followed the closure of the old Don Dale. It was clear he was the right man for the job. He was calm and relaxed and it was obvious he had a good rapport with both staff and detainees – something that had been missing in the previous “Jimmy’s Boys” era that has been explored at length at the Royal Commission. He’d been given a task that was almost impossible; to maintain order and security at a facility that the previous Labor Government had been told as far back as 2010 could never be made secure, no matter how much money was spent on it. And he’d been asked to do this in an environment where his every move would be subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny, with a Royal Commission ready to pounce on any slip-up.
In the end he was made the scapegoat for an incident that rightly had the public fuming. Someone probably should have been sacked for allowing two dangerous teenage criminals to escape from Don Dale, but it shouldn’t have been Victor Williams. Fortunately, the Territory Families department is headed by Ken Davies, a genuine and fair man who is the most competent public servant in the Northern Territory. Davies answers to Territory Families Minister Dale Wakefield who, in a short period in office, has proven to be one of the most capable and decent people I’ve met in almost a decade of covering politics in the Northern Territory.
If there’s any justice left in this world they will reinstate Williams first thing Monday morning and give him a pay rise. As for the 25 new youth justice officers, all I can say is good luck.
Matt Cunningham is the Sky News Northern Australia correspondent