The government says harsh conditions in WA juvenile detention are necessary to keep detainees and the community safe. But so far it's failing on both fronts and now a teenager has paid with his life, writes state political reporter Keane Bourke.
But alone in his room in the early hours of last Thursday morning, a teenage boy seems to have made the tragic decision to end his own life.
"I feel trapped and alone. I get really sad and depressed because all they give us is a TV and I don't like watching TV," another told the Inspector.The Supreme Court of Western Australia finds three young detainees were subjected to "solitary confinement on a frequent basis"."It is one of prolonged systemic dehumanisation and deprivation, with no rehabilitative element or effect," President Hylton Quail said while sentencing one boy earlier this month.
The Aboriginal Legal Service has repeatedly warned the government about the mental health impacts of containing detainees to their cells.And if all of those warnings weren't enough to show exactly what direction the sad state of affairs in detention was heading in, the government was warned specifically about the boy who has now lost his life, Cleveland Dodd.
They described how he just wanted to return home, and their feeling that he was put in the "too hard basket" by those meant to keep him safe. "What we have to do is keep them safe but also try and make it better and get them out of their cell more frequently."But in the four months he's been in the job, detainees have been spending less time out of their cells, which the government has promised to fix by adding more prison guards to the facility.Repeatedly both Mr Papalia and his department were asked over the last week what else they had done to improve conditions at Unit 18.
"If you locked up a dog in a cage for 20 hours a day, the RSPCA will turn up at your house and remove it," Jacqueline McGowan-Jones told ABC Radio Perth last week."But we think it's reasonable to lock troubled, traumatised young people into a cell for 20 hours a day and … expect that their behaviour will improve, and … expect that they won't suffer mental health issues.""Can I just say I want to see Unit 18 shut down," Premier Roger Cook said.
These are genuinely some of the state's most vulnerable, troubled, traumatised and complex children, who need all the help they can get if they are to have any hope of turning their lives around.They haven't been educated, rehabilitated or even treated. Just detained and isolated in ways the government's critics argue is making their situation even worse, and their prospects of recovery even more remote.
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