The State of Victoria locks up 10, 11 and 12 year-old children, primary school aged kids, and holds them in filthy overcrowded and understaffed prisons where prison guards encourage fights, diseases are rampant, and violence is common place.
Over the past six months the media has reported on multiple riots and disturbances at the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre in Parkville.
Last week, twenty teenagers detained at Parkville broke out of their cells, obtained tools from the centre’s tool shop, broke other detainees out, and ultimately holed up in the buildings roof space.
Their demands? Junk food and a phone according to The Age. I wonder who they wanted to call and what they planned to say.
After the most recent riots last week, the Andrews government has announced that the Parkville centre will be pulled down and rebuilt. The estimated forty teenagers involved in recent disturbances ought to be congratulated, they broke an entire prison, and are forcing the government to act where all manner of other institutions have failed.
In 2010 a report by the Victorian state Ombudsman “found conditions were so bad that a new facility should be built at another site”.
The Ombudsman’s report described Parkville as “dirty, unhygienic and ill-maintained”:
The probe found a ”high prevalence” of communicable infections such as scabies, golden staph and school sores, as well as ”hanging points” throughout the precinct, ”mouldy and dirty” conditions, blocked smoke detector vents and electrical hazards. There were at least two reports to WorkSafe about staff receiving electric shocks from appliances.
In 2010, the Ombudsman’s report was damning of the staff employed at Parkville. According to The Age:
Staff members alleged some of their colleagues had encouraged fights between detainees and incited violence to punish those who ”deserved” it. There were also reports that staff had assaulted detainees and at times attempted to conceal assaults while restraining detainees.
Keeping anyone in these conditions could only be described as a human rights abuse. In 2010 the government claimed it had accepted the Ombudsman’s recommendations and there would be new investment and changes at the Parkville centre.
Recent riots have revealed how little has changed at Parkville.
Eighty percent of the childen held at Parkville are on remand. They have not been convicted on an offence, and they are entitled to be presumed innocent.
Accounts from the CPSU, people involved in corrections and former detainees describe the Parkville centre as overcrowded, understaffed, dirty and unhygienic.
Victorian state government figures from July this year revealed that violence is endemic at the Parkville centre:
Department figures show that over the past four years there have been 183 Category 1 reports across the youth system, which comprises the Parkville Youth Residential Centre, the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre and two units at Malmsbury.
However, 100 of those cases were recorded in the last 12 months alone, compared with only 34 cases in 2014-15; 23 in 2013-14; and 26 in 2012-13.
In 2015 the Commissioner for Children, Bernie Geary decried the treatment of children being held on remand:
Mr Geary said that of the 83 people at Parkville Youth Residential Centre last week, only 19 had been sentenced, meaning that more than 75 per cent of children and young people at the centre are still awaiting their day in court. He said 10 of the children on remand, or 15 per cent, were aged between 10 and 14 years old.
“It’s probably the state’s best-kept secret that these children are locked up and haven’t been tried and that most of them, once they have been tried, are released into the community,” Mr Geary said. “It’s just crazy.”
A large number of these kids incarcerated at Parkville are Indigenous.
These stats from the AIC are dated but still relevant; Indigenous kids make up between 50-60% of incarcerated children in Australia.
Rates of Indigenous child removal are also ballooning, it’s been rightly described as a second stolen generation.
There is an unambiguous link between exposure to the ‘child protection’ system and a person’s likelihood of ending up the Youth Justice system.
Indigenous kids are being removed from their parents and families at increasing rates, sent into Victoria’s failed child protection system and are then filtered through the courts into degrading treatment at places like Parkville.
The detention of children at the Parkville centre is an unambiguous breach of the state of Victoria’s obligations under Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 37 (abridged by author):
No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. … The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be … used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time
Victoria’s own Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 states:
Section 23: Children in the criminal process
(1) An accused child who is detained or a child detained without charge must be segregated from all detained adults.
(2) An accused child must be brought to trial as quickly as possible.
(3) A child who has been convicted of an offence must be treated in a way that is appropriate for his or her age.
The initial response by the Andrews government has been to announce further breaches of human rights law.
The Victorian government has announced it’s intend to transfer forty children from the Parkville centre to the adult prison system. Such transfers are probably illegal under current Victorian and international law, it seems for the moment that the Youth Parole board agrees.
Irrespective of their crimes and backgrounds, the Parkville rioters deserve congratulations and solidarity. By all accounts detention in the Victorian Youth Justice system is characterized by violence, overcrowding, and filthy conditions. These kids know that because they are stuck in it.
Forty rioting kids have forced a government to act where Unions, the Ombudsman, and multiple Children’s Commissioners failed.
The Parkville centre is now likely to be demolished and rebuilt elsewhere. The campaign still to be fought is for changes in the bail act, and provisions around remand and detention. Children should not be in prisons.
Taking on the prison system.
Latest Information…
The Victorian government today announced it is going ahead with the transfer of child offenders to the Barwon maximum security prison.
Whilst earlier plans to put some children in the general adult prison population had been blocked, the government intends to segregate a wing of the Barwon prison and use it as a “youth justice center”.
The long overdue demolition of the Parkville centre may also be pushed back as the government has announced plans to “fortify” the centre for continued use.
At least some of the kids being sent to a maximum security prison are on remand, they have not been convicted of an offence.
If the government continues to hold and brutalize children in these conditions more riots are likely. And more riots would be entirely appropriate.
I intend to follow this article up with more on the Parkville centre in the next couple of days. I’d welcome any input that anyone reading who might have experienced the system (on either side of the bars) might have for the next article.
Bernie, I have visited the new high security section at Malmsbury. It is hideous, a grey concrete, soul destroying, sterile place. Don’t let them build this kind of prison for the kids on remand.
Good summary of the situation Kieran, from what I have heard it is a brutal place. With the Andrews govt approach to inner city realestate, I doubt they will do anything more than a bandaid fix… as YJP is currently sitting on prime inner city acres. It’s probably already been handshake’d to some wealthy developer.