I will continue to speak up for much needed youth justice reforms

• Protect detainees from self-harm

• Ensure the new facility and existing Banksia Hill facility provides targeted therapeutic support and programs

• Raise the age of criminal responsibility across Australia.

• Provide more intervention and prevention initiatives for at risk youth. 

I have been concerned about youth justice issues, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children since the 2022 election and have raised issues relating to incarcerated children in Western Australia with both the Federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus and Minister Linda Burney.  

There is evidence-based consensus across the health, social science and legal sectors that demonstrates young children have not reached the critical stage of brain development to fully understand the impact of their choices and consequently cannot be held criminally responsible for their actions.  

We need to reduce the number of children having contact with the criminal justice system and provide more early intervention and prevention programs. A good place to start would be to raise the minimum detention age from 10 years to 14 years, which reform I have raised with the Federal Attorney General. 

By exposing children early to youth detention, we are also exponentially increasing the chances they will commit further crimes. 

There are reported to be very serious issues with the conditions of incarceration at both Banksia Hill and at Casuarina Prison child detention Unit 18 where detainees are reported to be locked up for most of the day and at serious risk of self-harm. Tragically two teenagers have died within 10 months of each other in 2023 and 2024 at those facilities and the inquest into the death of one of the teenagers in August this year exposed significant operational failures and the need for cultural change in prison staff. 

Locking up young children also makes little economic sense. Broadly it costs $300,000 to lock up one child per year in Western Australia. [For the 2023 financial year it cost $75million alone to run Banksia Hill and the child detention Unit 18 at Casuarina Prison.]  This is money that could be much better spent on prevention programs. 

The Western Australian State Government announced in late September 2024 that it is planning to build a new facility to house high risk youth detainees and replace Unit 18. The proposed new facility will be alongside existing prison facility at Banksia Hill.  

I welcome this news, but the State Government must move expediently with this project so that at risk children can be relocated.