2023-10-25
Comments during and following Senate Estimates hearings (department of the Attorney General)
Attributable to Greens portfolio holder for First Nations, Resources, Trade, Tourism and Sport, and Yamatji Noongar woman, Senator Dorinda Cox:
“It is a national shame that a 16 year old child with an intellectual disability has taken his own life in Unit 18 at Casuarina, the maximum security adult prison, the first death of a child in WA history.
“This is not a place for vulnerable children. This boy was on remand and should not have been locked in his cell for 22 hours or more a day, as many of the youth detainees routinely are.
“I note the comments expressed by the President of the WA Children’s Court Hylton Quail who said that conditions for boys in Unit 18 are ‘barbaric’ and that they are ‘brutalised and alienated’.
“President Quail noted that children are being locked down for 20 to 23 hours every day, effectively in solitary confinement for at times 46 days in a row and remarked that the boys are subjected to by far the worst conditions of incarceration of any group in WA and it is worse than an adult prison.
“He stated that those who administer Unit 18 do so with impunity, continue to ignore warnings issued by the court and conditions are getting progressively worse.
“President Quail also said that time in custody amounts to a form of extrajudicial and unlawful punishment that served no rehabilitative effect.
“I strongly urge the WA and federal governments to listen to President Quail’s words, to truly hear what he is saying as a man with standing and expertise in the justice system and to recognise the immense damage being done to another generation of First Nations young men.
“Closing the Gap targets should not be a side dish in this country as they are one thing that will save lives.
“I am calling on the federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus and Premier Roger Cook to use their powers to close Unit 18.
“It has been 30 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and more than 555 First Nations people have died in custody.
“We need urgent action to advance targets 10 and 11 of Closing the Gap report and the federal government must act on the 223 recommendations that fall within its jurisdiction.”