Northern Territory Courts cut the after-hours bail service on March 7, creating more danger, particularly for minors.
The NT News a 15-year-old girl was detained in the Palmerston Watch House for more than 48 hours because she was arrested on a Friday and there were no on-call judges to hear an after-hours bail application.
“Police watch houses are terrible places,†Justice not Jails member Cam McNaughton told Â鶹´«Ã½.
“Children don’t belong there. You can’t shower. You can’t use the toilet without being observed. The lights are always on. They have no right to see their family. It’s solitary confinement.â€
Solitary confinement violent behaviours, as well as a host of negative physiological and psychological reactions.
Before it was repurposed, children inside the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre were being locked in their cells sometimes for more than 20 hours a day. That led to a spike in self-harm and suicide attempts.
Allowing children to be detained in isolation for days in police watch houses breaches several international conventions.
The 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 37, states: “Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her ageâ€.
Police treat children, who they arrest, as if they were already guilty. NT Police spit hoods to be used in police watch houses, meaning that the longer that children are detained, the greater the risk that they will be put in spit hoods, exposing them to severe trauma.
“The use of spit hoods is torture,†said McNaughton. “It should be avoided at all costs. We should keep children away from situations where there’s a greater risk that they will be used.â€
Keeping children in isolation in an alienating environment entrenches the vicious circle of trauma and criminalisation.
“If the courts are so under-resourced that they can’t provide an after-hours bail service, that’s the government’s problem. The kids should not be punished for that,†McNaughton said.
“The absence of strict time limits on how long children can be detained by police is unacceptable.â€
The Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory found that NT Police “over charge†children and young people with offences.
Since its election last year, the Country Liberal Party (CLP) has unleashed an assault on First Nations children and families via its “tough on crime†measures, including lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 back to 10, and for their children not going to school.
The CLP announced on March 20 it would public housing tenants who fall behind on rent, despite the connection between homelessness and incarceration.
Justice not Jails is concerned that the government’s turbocharges its power to destroy the Territory’s environment and livelihoods, increasing the imprisonment rate while doing nothing to produce safer communities in the long term.