Wasted on Youth
An enduring quality of Tasmanian Governments is that they never give up on a truly appalling idea. Particularly if it has proved for decades to be a truly appalling idea, one that entrenches and aggravates the very problem it pretends to solve.
One that costs taxpayers a bucket of wasted money a) on the implementation and operation of the appalling idea and then b) in the payment of compensation to the victims of the implementation of the appalling idea.
But credit where credit is due – congratulations must duly be given to the government for persistence, even in the face of massive failure and a mountain of advice not to persist with the truly appalling idea.
One of the government’s latest truly appalling ideas has its roots in colonial times, or at least, a colonial mindset.
It is the building of a new youth detention facility at Pontville. This facility is to serve the entire state.
Just like the existing, but sometime in the next 500 years to be demolished, or at least closed, Ashley Youth Detention Centre at Deloraine.
The idea, that children who offend or who are just alleged to have committed an offence, must be incarcerated in a centralised, single youth detention centre, seems to have taken a limpet-like hold on our government, despite contrary advice from successive expert investigations, agencies, enquiries and reports, most recently, the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings.
In 2022 the COI recommended that the Ashley Youth Detention Centre be closed.
Why? Because it made Port Arthur look like a paradise for prisoners. The COI was scathing in its assessment, stating that “The problems were overwhelming and pervasive”. A range of issues were canvassed, including harmful sexual behaviours, the use of force and isolation and abuse by staff.
When the COI’s report was released, the then (and now) Tasmanian Premier, the Hon Jeremey Rockliff MHA, promised to implement all the COI’s recommendations, including the closure of Ashley.
The COI welcomed that decision, stating that the Centre “is not fit for purpose as a youth detention facility and should be shut down as soon as possible.” They described it as “a horrific blight on Tasmania” – that’s worth engraving on every Tasmanian Parliamentarians’ desk, just to remind them that it is their responsibility to banish that blight and make sure it never recurs.
Just to stress the horrific nature of detention at Ashley, the Government agreed to pay compensation of $75 million to detainees for abuse that had been perpetrated there between 1960 and 2023.
To prevent its recurrence, the COI recommended a complete and fundamental rethink of responses to youth justice in Tasmania – one that is evidence based and therapeutic. In accordance with this recommendation the Government announced that it would replace Ashley with five purpose-built facilities with a preventive rather than punitive focus – a detention facility in the south, two assisted bail facilities in the north and south and two supported residential facilities in the north and south.
So, what happened to that fine aspiration? Well, first it was announced that Ashley would be closed by 2024, then the closure was delayed to 2026, and most recently we have been told that it would “likely” be closed in 2028.
In 2024 the government abandoned the plan to build five purpose-built facilities and instead now plans to build only one in the south. So slowly but surely the Government has been heading towards changing nothing. Maintaining the status quo. Leaving things just as they are.
This is beyond disgraceful because we know that complaints by inmates of abuse at Ashley continue to be made. We know that facilities like Ashley are criminogenic. The recidivism rates for children exiting detention are far higher than for children serving sentences under supervision in the community. And for this, taxpayers paid $1,616,500 per young person in detention in the 2023/24 financial year alone.
One of the most significant preventatives of youth offending is attachment to significant other people. Yet facilities like Ashley smash attachments. They break children’s family and community ties and ties with significant other people in their lives. They disrupt children’s education and employment.
Cultivating ties is something that island people value and achieve like no others.
Yet, what we Tasmanians are so highly adept at doing is the very thing that the government is preventing by retaining and building a single centralised youth detention facility in Tasmania.
It makes no practical or economic sense to build another Ashley. What is needed are smaller, secure, safe and non-criminogenic ‘home like’ facilities around the state.
The Government should break with its engrained but dumb track record and dump, once and for all, the appalling idea of a single state youth detention facility.
Adjunct Associate Professor Terese Henning and Dr Val Kitchener are members of Tasmanian OPCAT Network. Tasmanian OPCAT Network is comprised of Tasmanians who are members of the Australian OPCAT Network, and educates and raises awareness of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Cruel Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (OPCAT) and the OPCAT Implementation Act 2021.
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