There’s a lot we do differently in WA and much of it, sandgropers would argue, for the better.
WARNING: This story discusses incidents of self-harm and contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died.
But the inquest into the state’s first death in juvenile detention has heard there’s one road we’re going down alone which might not be for the best.
The effects stretch across the community, and strike at the heart of public safety.
Just children
In general, our society recognises the important differences between adults and teenagers, with their still-developing brains.
It’s why we don’t let people vote, drink alcohol or drive unrestricted until they’re at least 18.
And it’s why in every state and territory – except for WA – youth justice is run separately from adult prisons, in some cases sitting in entirely separate departments.
A different minister sits at the top and youth detention is in many cases run by people with expertise in the area.
But WA is different.
The corrective services minister is responsible for both adults and children, as is his corrective services commissioner.
The current commissioner is an ex-cop. His predecessor spent nearly four decades in adult prisons.
The two previous deputy commissioners for women and young people had also spent almost all of their careers in adult corrections.
They’re not bad people – the inquest heard – but their backgrounds mean they’re not necessarily best equipped to handle the two very different groups.
Youth justice ‘a reset’
One of those people is former commissioner Mike Reynolds.
By his own admission he didn’t often agree with advocates for change in youth justice, like former Children’s Court president Denis Reynolds and former inspector of custodial services Neil Morgan.
But on the issue of separating youth detention from adult corrections, the trio were in “lock step”, he said, “because philosophically their roles and functions are different”.
Prisons are meant to punish adults by locking them up.
“Youth custodial is supposed to be about a reset, working with those young people and ensuring they have a chance to get back into their families, their communities and carry on with their lives,” Reynolds told the inquest.
Rehabilitation is meant to be the focus of detention, not retribution.
Reynolds said he’d told the three ministers he served under that youth justice needed to sit outside corrections “at the barest minimum”.
His deputy for part of that period, Andrew Beck, agreed when he took the stand.
“There’s good reason why other jurisdictions don’t have it within corrective services because when you do that you overlay adult thinking and adult responses to a child’s needs,” Mr Beck said.
That adult thinking meant over time detention became less rehabilitative and more punitive, the inquest heard from multiple witnesses.
‘Not a corrections system’
South Australia’s Social Services Minister Nat Cook understands the difference better than most.
Her son, Sam Davis, was killed in a one-punch assault by a 19-year-old in 2008.
“I had many people saying to me: lock him up, throw away the key,” she told the ABC last year.
“It takes a lot of strength and determination to work your way through that, also many nights without any sleep, to do that research, to learn, actually, there are other ways to support young people who find themselves in a youth justice pathway.”
The South Australian system, within the Department of Human Services, has had its own issues in recent years, including the youth detention watchdog and the department butting heads over the length of time young people were spending in their cells.
But the minister said the system was taking a modern, therapeutic and more effective approach to youth justice, and being in a different department to adult corrections was an “absolutely essential” part of that.
“This is about a … separated, but slightly connected, form of support, education, development, resilience for young people. It is not a corrections system,” Ms Cook said.
Underlying causes need addressing
One of the many reasons experts say the difference is important is that while the crimes young people commit can be very adult – like breaking into homes or seriously assaulting people – the causes behind the offending often aren’t.
A landmark study published in 2018 found about nine out of every 10 young people in detention in WA had at least one form of severe brain impairment, which made them more likely to run into issues with the law.
Their brains, through no fault of their own, are hard-wired to find it difficult to learn from mistakes or understand consequences in the way most of us do.
The solution, experts say, isn’t to punish them more, because they don’t understand it and just become angrier.
Instead, the underlying causes of offending, like mental impairments and poverty, need to be addressed.
It’s hard to have that kind of nuance in a system overwhelmingly focused on adult prisoners though.
One example Mr Beck gave was staff, even specially trained youth custodial officers, focusing on taking things away from young people when they misbehaved, which he said research showed didn’t work.
“Once you take everything away from a young person, what’s left?” he told the court.
“They’ve got nothing left, so you get the behaviour that some of the young people that you saw.”
During Mr Beck’s time young people in Banksia Hill, at that point the only youth detention centre in WA, extensively damaged cells and rioted a number of times, which the Department said justified the hasty creation of Unit 18 in a maximum security adult prison, just over a year before Cleveland Dodd’s fatal self-harm.
Department ‘chaotic’
But putting the experts’ approach into practice is easier said than done.
The former deputy commissioner recalled there was “a lot of work put in” to preparing youth justice to move across to the Department of Communities before it was realised legislation needed to be changed, and the plans were scrapped.
Mr Beck said during his time resources had been stripped out in preparation for the move but never replaced.
“It was very much isolated and expected to function in its own right and it wasn’t supported, in my opinion, by our corporate structures within the department that, in my opinion, were chaotic,” he told the inquest.
“It’s not just the poor cousin, it’s just a completely rejected relative,” counsel assisting, Anthony Crocker, put to him.
“Yes,” he replied.
Little appetite for change
Both Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia, who took charge only after Beck left his role, and the Department of Justice declined to answer questions, citing the inquest.
But on the outside there appears to be little appetite for what Reynolds, Coyne and others are asking for.
Legislation introduced to Parliament this week will make it easier for adult prison officers to be used “to assist in improving the security and safety at youth detention centres,” according to the Minister.
They’ll be able to use “controlled weapons” in certain circumstances, but only after receiving additional training and getting a Working With Children Check (which some officers deployed previously didn’t).
It will allow youth custodial officers “to focus on the rehabilitation and mentoring of detainees”, the minister said.
But is also risks imposing more of that adult prison mindset on youth detention.
More funding needed
That issue isn’t one the government seems to want to deal with, but might be forced to.
When the idea was raised by Commissioner Reynolds, Coroner Philip Urquhart said it might be a “very good recommendation for me to make”.
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It’s probably not what the government wants to hear, after former Premier Mark McGowan consolidated a range of government departments to try and save money after taking power.
Convincing his successors to create more bureaucracy isn’t going to be a vote winner.
But WA already spends around $150 million a year on a system which results in more than half of young people returning to detention at least once.
Taking a few more dollars out of the billions of surpluses to help keep us all safe and rehabilitate some of the state’s most vulnerable young people is something the government will likely need to consider.
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