BANKSIA HILL DETENTION CENTRE — FOUR CORNERS REPORT
683. Ms M.J. DAVIES to the Premier:
I again refer to the damning story
about Banksia Hill Detention Centre and youth justice in Western Australia that
aired on ABC's Four Corners
last night and the reports that up to September this year there have been 285 self-harm
incidents and 20 attempted suicides by
detainees. Will the government immediately instigate an independent inquiry
into Western Australia's youth justice system and treatment of
juveniles in detention; and, if not, why not?
Mr M. McGOWAN
replied:
I will be convening a meeting with a range of stakeholders
next week to hear any ideas they might have on practical and achievable
measures we can put in place to improve the system. Obviously, within any
juvenile or other detention facility we will have a range of incidents
involving people who are incarcerated and who do not want to be incarcerated.
That is natural. That is why we have a range of support and welfare services in
place. Psychologists and psychiatrists visit Banksia Hill to provide that
support. There are also a range of other welfare and counselling services.
There are staff who are trained in working with young people. All those things
go on currently. That is the regime that is in place.
As I outlined to the Leader of the Opposition in the question
she asked earlier, some of the people who are there are there because they
raped people or broke into someone's house and repeatedly assaulted
someone in their home or because they
committed arson and burnt down houses. We need an incarceration system for the
worst of offences. We have to. All those services are there for people.
The reason that some people have been moved into another unit is that they
destroyed their cells. We cannot keep them there because there is nowhere to
keep them. Somehow they managed to destroy
them. It is really quite remarkable how they did it, but they did. When they
are released into the broader prison
population, they disrupt 90 per cent of the young people there who want to
partake in recreational, educational and other opportunities. Some of
the detainees who moved into unit 18 assaulted the other detainees when they
were engaged in recreational activities or were in the yard. Some of them have
committed scores of assaults on youth
custodial officers. What are we to do? Are we to just say there is no
consequence for that and release them into the community? If someone has
a magical solution to that, please tell me, because all I hear is people
saying, ''Don't detain them.'' If we do not detain people
in that environment for committing those sorts of offences, all we will have is
more people in the broader community broken into, assaulted, harmed and that
sort of thing, so we have to try to put in place measures to deal with people
and help them get back on track, which is exactly what we are doing.
I note the minister advises—I have heard it a number
of times—that the number of young people in detention has come down
significantly. We have actually reduced the number because we put in place the
Target 120 measures in the community and a lot
of additional community welfare measures. We even backfilled the funding for
the police and community youth centres. We are putting in place an
on-country facility in the Kimberley so that the young people in the Kimberley,
Pilbara and perhaps the goldfields will be able to go to a pastoral station for
supervised attention and care, as opposed to coming to Banksia Hill. We are
putting in place those measures. They do not get any attention because people
just want to yell from the rooftops without taking into account what is
occurring in the system to improve it for the young people. I want to say this
to the Leader of the Opposition: we will continue to have a system that tries
to get young people back on track, but we are also going to protect the public
as best we can because innocent people deserve protection.