Last Monday’s (10 Feb 2014) ABC Four Corners Programme covered the rising international and domestic (Israeli) concern about the military system of youth justice and detention in the Palestinian Territories.
As a parent and an advocate for reform of the youth detention system in Western Australia and the Northern Territory I was disturbed by the images of what can be best described as traumatic and sometimes violent child abuse.
The UNICEF report into Children in Israeli Military Detention is timely. Some have criticised the programme for its geo-political spin, but few could dispute that children need protection.
The UNICEF report catalogues a series of reasonable recommendations to protect the rights of children including:
• A prohibition on solitary confinement
• A limitation on the use of restraints and strip searches
• More diversionary programmes and alternatives to court and imprisonment
• Medical Examinations before questioning, transfer and detention
• Less traumatic arrest procedures
• A ban on the use of confessions which were given without a lawyer or judge present
• Locating the place of detention near the family of the child and providing access to relatives
• Implementation of international norms and Covenants on the protection of children.
• A limitation on the use of restraints and strip searches
• More diversionary programmes and alternatives to court and imprisonment
• Medical Examinations before questioning, transfer and detention
• Less traumatic arrest procedures
• A ban on the use of confessions which were given without a lawyer or judge present
• Locating the place of detention near the family of the child and providing access to relatives
• Implementation of international norms and Covenants on the protection of children.
What shocked me about the UNICEF report was that virtually all of the recommendations could and should be applied to children in the Western Australian and NT youth detention systems. Many of the recommendations contained in the UNICEF report were made by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, over 20 years ago, and more recently by the Commissioner for Children in WA but they have never been implemented by the Western Australian and NT Governments.
Much was made in the report about exposing Palestinian youth to the elements but where is the concern for the Aboriginal children who have been kept in solitary confinement in 40 degree heat for 23 hours a day in youth detention in Western Australia.
Children at the Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Perth have been locked in their cells virtually all day, they are being denied basic education, health and rehabilitation programs and they have very little recreation time.
Calls for Israel to comply with international norms on the treatment of children should be matched here in Australia. Our politicians, bureaucrats, prison authorities and courts can simply ignore international norms on the treatment of children with impunity and without UNICEF scrutiny.
The Four Corners programme highlighted the disgraceful treatment of Palestinian youth in the Israeli Military youth justice system but they also reported the news that the Israeli Government and its Military has accepted that reform is required and will take steps to improve military youth justice and detention.
That's more than can be said for the Governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory who refuse to address the problem. Things are so bad that the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Chairperson, Warren Mundine called for a national summit on Aboriginal justice issues in order to reverse Aboriginal juvenile detention numbers and the soaring incarceration levels. In Western Australia, Aboriginal youth comprise 70 per cent of the juvenile detention population and in the Northern Territory the figure is as high as 98 per cent.
When will UNICEF and Four Corners to investigate the treatment of Aboriginal children in youth detention in Western Australia, until then one might take a jaundiced view about Four Corners’ internationalist position on this vital issue.
Four Corners, quite legitimately, raised the issue of the conditions of youth detention in the Palestinian Territories but the Israeli military has accepted at least some of UNICEF’s recommendations. Now it’s time for UNICEF and Four Corners to expose the scandalous treatment of Aboriginal youth by the Governments of WA and the NT.
George Newhouse is the head of Shine Lawyers social justice department and he advocated for Aboriginal youth in detention in WA (Wilson v Francis [2013] WASC 157).
