WA Law Society demands urgent action from Cook Government on trouble-plagued juvenile detention system

Human Rights Commissioners are set to meet with the State Government and corrective services authorities on Wednesday, after a second suicide in WA’s juvenile justice system in less than a year. The meeting, to be held at Parliament, comes as WA’s peak legal body wrote Cook Government demanding an urgent independent review of the State’s juvenile justice system, saying repeated pleas to fix it seem to be “falling on deaf ears”. In the letter sent to Premier Roger Cook and Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia this week, the Law Society of WA said the organisation — which represents the State’s lawyers — held “grave concerns” for the state of the system. It comes after the suicide of a 17-year-old boy at Banksia Hill Detention Centre last month, less than a year after the death of Cleveland Dodd in Unit 18 at Casuarina Prison. Law Society of WA president Paula Wilkinson said repeated calls to fix the system have been ignored. “The Supreme and Children’s courts have found repeatedly, over the last two years, that Corrective Services has acted unlawfully in the way it manages children in detention,” she said. “The Law Society has made repeated calls to government to review and fix the system, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears.” In the letter, the organisation also called for a “road map” to youth justice reforms, which it said should be informed by existing and ongoing consultation with youth justice experts. “We want the government to consult people with lived custodial experience and advocacy groups representing children in detention,” Ms Wilkinson said. The letter also reiterated the Law Society’s call for the Department of Justice to speed up the process of removing — or at least minimising — ligature points in all prison cells across WA, with priority given to those centres which hold juveniles. The process was a recommendation of the 1991 final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. “We have also called, again, for the immediate closure of Casuarina’s Unit 18, which the legal professionals say fails to comply with documented United Nations’ standards on the rights of children and the prevention of inhuman and cruel treatment,” Ms Wilkinson said. “Youth detention should be an environment for supervision and rehabilitation, not punishment and neglect.” On Wednesday, Mr Papalia disputed the Law Society’s letter. “A lot of what the Law Society have said is just plain wrong. You know, their assumptions, their claims with respect to conditions inside Unit 18 and Banksia Hill are wrong,” he said. Earlier this week, former WA Premier Colin Barnett said the conditions at Unit 18 bordered on “torture” and called on the State’s political leaders to show courage and close the facility. “Those young people, despite the offending they’ve done, are in small cells and experiencing 20 hours solitary confinement on a continuing basis,” Mr Barnett told The West. “To me, that is clearly abusive of anyone, but particularly of underage people, children, if you like, legally and I think it’s actually bordering on torture.” Mr Barnett, who has largely steered clear of criticising the Government in his retirement, said the “shameful” nature of the facility and the suicides had driven him to speak out. Roger Cook later blasted Colin Barnett for criticism over the conditions at Unit 18, saying the former Liberal Premier “lit the fuse” on youth justice by closing the Rangeview remand facility. Mr Cook also revealed a business case for a new facility at Banksia Hill, which would allow for the closure of Unit 18 at Casuarina Prison, had been finished and was now being considered by Treasury.