Poor top-tier management, lack of staff, lock-down regimes and cuts to education and rehabilitation services have created a pressure-cooker atmosphere that makes riots in Victoria's youth detention centres inevitable, a senior prison insider says.
Meanwhile, a toxic culture of fear and intimidation has disempowered the youth justice workforce, said the insider, who spoke to The Ballarat Courier on the condition of anonymity.
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New youth detention centre for Victoria
The Andrews government will build the centre in Werribee South after repeated warnings about overcrowding at the Malmsbury and Parkville facilities. (Video courtesy: Seven News Melbourne)
The source said cuts by the Department of Health and Human Services to educational and rehabilitation services had seen youth become disengaged and bored while in custody.
TAFE programs had been scrapped by the DHHS and outsourced to less effective models, they added.
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"This boredom creates all sorts of issues," the source said.
"We have massive rates of returnees and it seems to get worse and worse. We are paroling young people who aren't addressing their offending behaviour, one of the critical reasons why they come into youth justice, so once they are released they go on to re-offended.
"They remain a huge risk to communities."
Qualified youth workers are being used to supervise classrooms rather than utilising their skills. And, education providers are signing off on incomplete work and at times fudging the results, the source said.
"If they had specialised programs which motivated or interested the boys they would be engaged in learning. The key to breaking the cycle of offending is intervention, proper rehabilitation and education."
The insider said staff were intimidated and threatened on a daily basis by violent inmates, but were too afraid to psychically restrain young offenders, due to a high number of internal investigations. This left staff "demoralised and broken", they said.
"Physical force is always a last resort," the source said. "But what happens now is incidents escalate into a much higher level when it could be prevented if the youth was moved away from the situation."
A revolving door of staff has not helped, the source said.
"Since September last year, we have had monthly inductions for people coming to work across the youth precinct," they said.
"But we can't keep up, we can't even staff the units given that we've had that many recruitment, because we can't retain staff.
"Something needs to be done in terms of making the workplace safe so we can retain the staff and do the work with the boys that we need to do."
'They feel like they've got nothing to lose'
Earlier this month, 15 escapees from the Malmsbury youth detention centre went on a violent 24-hour crime spree, before being rounded up.
It followed a riot involving 30 inmates - the latest in a spate of riots at Victoria's two youth detention centres at Malmsbury and Parkville over the past two years.
In the lead up to the Malmsbury jailbreak, staff at both detention centres struggled to control riots and violent rampages involving large groups of youths, the insider said.
In one terrifying ordeal, teenagers took over their unit at Malmsbury, keeping guards at bay for three hours, brandishing makeshift weapons and smashing windows and fittings.
"We've had a build up to all this because we've had a series of riots across the two precincts," the insider said. "The boys feed into it and the media report it all of the time.
"We have young people in the 15 to 17-year-old demographic who developmentally don't make very good decisions and they get reinforcement from their peers and it continues to fuel it.
"This notoriety issue is a big deal for them."
Ringleaders involved in violent uprisings in Parkville were transferred to Malmsbury in the weeks leading up to the January 25 escape, when youths overpowered and bashed a guard and stole his swipe card.
"It's been extremely difficult for staff because they've never had to deal with this type of client before," the insider said.
"They don't listen to the staff, they're out of control, they don't follow direction. The common attitude is 'well, what can you do, I'm under 18, you can't transfer me to prison anyway'."
"They feel like they've got nothing to lose."
Complete overhaul
Forty more highly trained adult prison staff will move to secure Malmsbury and Parkville youth centres in the wake of the riots.
A review of Victoria's youth justice system is also under way to replace the current 16-year-old policy framework. The state Ombudsman is also preparing to table yet another report about the system.
This week, it was revealed a new high-security youth justice centre will be built by the state government in Werribee South following the violent uprisings, escapes and several damning reviews of existing facilities at Malmsbury and Parkville.
But the insider said it was a "reactive" response by the government failing to address the endemic core issues fuelling the present crisis.
They said there was a critical need for increased funding for rehabilitation programs for high risk youth and mandatory attendance as part of sentencing.
The source said a complete overhaul of legislation was needed, including tightening the state's dual track sentencing system, which allowed some of the most dangerous and worst offending youths to repeatedly be put into youth detention centres.
Tougher sentencing was also needed for for repeat offenders in the 18 to 21 age group, the source said.
Victoria's unique dual track system under the Sentencing Act 1991 allows adult courts to sentence young offenders (aged under 21 years) to serve custodial sentences in youth detention instead of adult prison.
For a young offender to qualify for youth detention, the court must be convinced they have reasonable prospects of rehabilitation, or they are particularly impressionable, immature, or likely to be subjected to undesirable influences in an adult prison.
While legislation does allow the Youth Parole Board to transfer dangerous detainees to adult prisons, they are reluctant to do so despite them posing a serious risk to the lives of other inmates and staff, the insider said.
"The process of getting to the point of application is extremely difficult and generally means the client commits a number of offences in custody that endanger staff, other clients and the environment before this will occur."
The insider said magistrates also needed to make directions during sentencing which made it mandatory for young offenders to participate in offence rehabilitation programs while they were custody.
At the moment, young offenders, including those with a history of drug and alcohol-fuelled offending, are able to reject rehabilitation programs aimed at helping them, the source said.
Department of Education and Training program spokesman Craig Simon said young people in youth detention centres could access a range of vocational certificates while in custody.
On admission to a youth justice custodial centre, all young people - those on remand and serving a sentence - received a health screening that considered any immediate medical, physical, psychological needs and formed the basis of an "immediate needs" plan, the state government said.
The government said all clients received education, rehabilitation, and mental and physical health services.
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