BANKSIA HILL DETENTION
CENTRE — FOUR CORNERS REPORT
680. Ms M.J. DAVIES to the Premier:
I refer to the Four Corners
expose, ''Locking Up Kids: Australia's failure to protect
children in detention'', which aired last night. Why has it taken the
Premier and his government so long to concede that there is a problem with
youth justice in Western Australia when experts like retired Western Australian
judge Denis Reynolds; former Inspector of Custodial Services Neil Morgan;
President of the Children's Court, Hylton Quail; former police
commissioners and the Telethon Kids Institute, have been raising these concerns
for some months, and in some cases for years, only to be ignored?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
I watched the program last night.
Obviously, we have had a look at some of the measures that staff sometimes use
to restrain people and we have requested that they be changed and that
alternative measures, when required, are used. That is one of the things we
learnt from last night's episode of Four Corners. Having said
that, obviously we have a system at Banksia Hill Detention Centre that provides
educational, welfare, psychological, psychiatric, recreational and musical
services to the detainees there. With regard to the detainees who were moved to
unit 18, they were moved there because of behavioural issues—in
particular, assaulting staff. Some of them have assaulted staff on literally
scores of occasions and have ruined their cells, so we had to move them
elsewhere. That is not unprecedented; the last government did exactly the same
thing. When the Leader of the Opposition was a minister, her government did
exactly the same thing.
That is the reality of what we are
dealing with. The youth custodial officers at Banksia Hill have to do a difficult
job. They are trained to deal with people in crisis and a range of other
things, and I would like to thank them and the other staff at Banksia Hill for
the work that they do. That workforce has to deal with difficult situations. We
are spending $25 million on upgrading Banksia Hill, including an Aboriginal
services unit, which is a $3 million to $4 million
commitment that we announced in the last budget. On top of that, there will
also be a rebuild of the crisis care unit and a strengthening of the
intensive supervision units to make them less able to be damaged by detainees.
All that work is ongoing.
This
week or next week, at some point in time, I will meet with some of the
individuals who have been public about these
matters to hear whether they have any practical or achievable ways to improve
the system—practical or achievable.
I heard some people on the program
last night, including the journalist, say that detention should not be
happening. A lot of the juveniles who are in detention are there because of
serious sexual assaults, serious assaults on people, arson offences and armed
robbery. Some people advocate that there should not be consequences for that; I
do not agree with that.