{"id":76919,"date":"2016-08-01T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=76919"},"modified":"2016-07-28T16:27:17","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T15:27:17","slug":"australia-the-scourge-of-youth-detention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/australia-the-scourge-of-youth-detention\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia: The Scourge of Youth Detention"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Northern Territory, Torture, and Australia\u2019s Detention Disease<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re changing is a culture in an organisation within the youth detention system and I think we\u2019ve come a long way in that time.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u2014 Adam Giles, NT Chief Minister, ABC News, July 26, 2016<\/p>\n

26 Jul 2016 – <\/em>It was an image that would not have been out of place in the sickly procession of pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib and Guant\u00e1namo Bay during the ill-fated and misnamed war on terror. \u00a0Here was a young man, seated, strapped in and euphemistically \u201crestrained,\u201d verging on catatonic; on his head, a suffocating bag.<\/p>\n

Within hours of the Australian investigative news program Four Corners covering that incident on Monday [25 Jul], and various other incidents of violence at the Don Dale facility outside Darwin in the Northern Territory, the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced a royal commission.<\/p>\n

Context is everything, and a mere description about the abuse of youths in detention facilities tends to fall on a public deaf and immune to state sanctioned cruelty. Australia\u2019s two-track morality here is evident in its tolerance of pacific gulags that house intrepid asylum seekers, and on land for others similarly deemed undesirable.<\/p>\n

In the Northern Territory, where frontier law making meets frontier violence, such devices as the restraint chair which kept Dylan Voller shackled, were approved under the legislation of the state. \u00a0Carceral politics, in other words, is big in the north, and becomes particularly piquant when dealing with youths.<\/p>\n

The Don Dale facility is but one manifestation of this state-sanctioned enthusiasm, characterised by periods of prolonged solitary confinement, strip searching and excessive force. \u00a0It is designed to be punitive, a form of retribution against youths who have defied the social order. \u00a0As with any other system of torture, it is the foot of power visibly applied to the backs and bodies of children.<\/p>\n

The policy of the Territory has also seen a growing young prison population of which 96 per cent are Indigenous. \u00a0It is also the Australian territory with the highest percentage of indigenous citizens \u2013 30 per cent in all.<\/p>\n

The NT Chief Minister, Adam Giles, gives an insigh<\/a>t into how distinctly indifferent he has been to such revelations. On the one hand, an appearance of immediate action has been required: sacking, for instance, the minister overseeing young detainees, John Elferink. \u00a0\u201cI sat and watched the footage [from Four Corners] and recognised the horror through my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has followed since has been a cultivated obliviousness, despite knowledge about such footage as the tear gassing of youths at Don Dale being available for at least a year. \u00a0Giles claimed to have had no sense that this had been happening. \u00a0As a head disembodied from the rest of the detention structure, the chief minister suggested that \u201cover time there has most certainly been a culture of cover-up within the Corrections system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ditto the police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, and ministers at the federal level. \u00a0\u201cThis is not Australia,\u201d declared deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who went on to suggest that Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, would have stirred had he gotten an inkling something was wrong.<\/p>\n

Such surprises become even less plausible given the operating assumptions of the entire detention system. \u00a0Giles paints a picture of necessary incarceration in a world of violent children, street menaces who risk the security of everybody else. \u00a0At a press conference on Wednesday, Giles observed that, \u201cNobody wants to see a kid in jail, but nobody wants to see their own kids assaulted by other kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the NT community, the minister noted on Tuesday, were \u201csick of youth crime\u2026 they have had a gutful.\u201d \u00a0The children, not a sick frontier mentality, constituted the ghoulish problem, these demons keen to smash cars, initiate house break-ins and assaulting citizens.<\/p>\n

Each press conference that has been given has been typified by this spirit of disingenuousness. All of it is marked by one overwhelming acceptance: youth detention, with all its maximums security frills, is necessary. \u00a0Besides, he retorts, there were \u201cimprovements\u201d in youth detention; but it was \u201cnot perfect\u201d.<\/p>\n

This begged the question as to whether a royal commission was even necessary, an overegging of an already improved pudding. \u00a0\u201cI want to make sure we have a safe community to live in, where kids aren\u2019t breaking into homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Giles revealed another tactic suggesting that any investigation into the youth detention system is not going to have legs. Note, claimed the chief minister, the way some of the youths in the footage were actually<\/em> behaving. \u00a0The blaming of inmates remains the default position.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are kids who are trying to deliberately cause cranial issues by bashing their head against the wall.\u201d \u00a0Such naughtiness, though quiet, meditative reflection is hardly the sort of thing encouraged in the NT detention system for desperate youths.<\/p>\n

Officers themselves need \u201cto be able to de-escalate issues when children are not in\u2026 a calm environment within themselves and at all times those kids\u2019 wellbeing is being put at the best possible place.\u201d<\/p>\n

To add to this furore, Giles has been accompanied at stages by indigenous politician Bess Price, the Territory\u2019s Minister for Community Services, claiming that various families were happy to see their children in prison. \u00a0This eye-brow raising comment was perfectly tailored to a system of necessary teaching and retribution: bad boys needed to be taught a lesson, to be made better.<\/p>\n

Whatever it is deemed, be it a culture, a form of thinking, or an attitude, any revelation to its practitioners via the medium of a television program is bound to sting. \u00a0That a royal commission has been the borne fruit in this endeavour may not mean very much. \u00a0Political figures such as Giles suggest that mentalities can be immoveable. \u00a0The prison alternative remains all powerful.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dissidentvoice.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Northern Territory, Torture, and Australia\u2019s Detention Disease – It was an image that would not have been out of place in the sickly procession of pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib and Guant\u00e1namo Bay during the ill-fated and misnamed war on terror. Here was a young man, seated, strapped in and euphemistically \u201crestrained,\u201d verging on catatonic; on his head, a suffocating bag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}