Managing editor Michelle Pini discusses the alacrity with which the incoming Northern Territory CLP Government aims to lower the age of criminal responsibility, among other Draconian measures.
THE NORTHERN TERRITORY has elected another Country Liberal Party Government. This iteration comes complete with a platform that prioritises lowering the age of criminal responsibility to ten years and reintroducing spit hoods.
Sure, not quite two years ago, the age of criminal responsibility in the NT was lifted from ten to 12.
And it's true the Council of Attorneys-General's 'Age of Criminal Responsibility Working Group Report' recommended, in 2023, that the age of criminality be lifted — not reduced.
And, yes, a Royal Commission on the reprehensible treatment of young children in detention in that territory was conducted in 2017, the findings of which outraged anyone with even a hint of a moral compass but, hey, the CLP are strong on maintaining tradition.
Rumours are circulating that the new NT Government will soon also instigate a comprehensive chimney sweep program as part of its new plan to ”give kids every opportunity in life to succeed”.
Does anyone even remember the Don Dale atrocities or the Federal intervention and Royal Commission into the Protection & Detention of Children in the NT it triggered? Perhaps Chief Minister-elect Lia Finocchiaro mistook the findings as policy guidelines instead of direct contraventions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child or the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, or even the Northern Territory's own Youth Justice Act.
Here is a snapshot of the Northern Territory youth detention facility’s reprehensible treatment of children in its care, cited directly from the Royal Commission findings:
- youth detention centres were not fit for accommodating, let alone rehabilitating, children and young people;
- children were subject to verbal abuse, physical control and humiliation, including being denied access to basic human needs such as water, food and the use of toilets;
- children were dared or bribed to carry out degrading and humiliating acts, or to commit acts of violence on each other;
- youth justice officers restrained children using force to their head and neck areas, ground stabilised children by throwing them forcefully onto the ground, and applied pressure or body weight to their ‘window of safety’, being their torso area; and
- isolation has continued to be used inappropriately, punitively and inconsistently with the Youth Justice Act (NT) which has caused suffering to many children and young people and, very likely in some cases, lasting psychological damage.
Additional unspeakable acts inflicted by youth detention officers upon children in custody included filming them while in the shower, frequent naked body searches, spraying them with lethal CG gas and covering their heads with spit hoods while restraining and torturing them.
The above image of 15-year-old Dylan Voller captured a small part of the brutal treatment to which he was subjected at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Dylan later told the Royal Commission that he had told the prison officers the restraint was hurting, he was dizzy, panicking and vomited in his mouth a few times.
The Royal Commission's final report stated:
...When he was 15, Dylan spent a period of 210 days in custody. Ninety of those days were spent in isolation or in the Behavioural Management Unit, where no child or young person should ever have been accommodated. ...
Nothing done during that 210-day period resembled anything that could be described as a meaningful attempt at rehabilitation.
Perhaps Ms Finocchiaro is also ignorant about the treatment of children held at Don Dale or of the Royal Commission's finding that:
‘Spit hoods have the potential to cause distress to young persons, particularly when used in combination with other forms of restraint.’
Did the incoming Chief Minister also miss the Royal Commission's recommendation that the use of spit hoods ‘should be prohibited’?
Obviously, Ms Fonocchiaro must have forgotten the part where the Royal Commission stated:
The approach to the isolation of children and young people in Northern Territory detention centres was indicative of a system in crisis where the leadership at all levels seemed incapable of rising above the day to day cycle of misbehaviour, isolation and punishment. A system was put in place built around a culture where little focus was placed on duty of care, respect and protection to the children and young people to whom it was owed.
Nonetheless, Ms Finocchiaro told reporters that spit hoods and lowering the criminality age would be enacted immediately:
"...So that young people can be held accountable and that appropriate consequences for their age are delivered."
It's interesting that the Chief Minister-elect chose to bring up "accountability" and "appropriate consequences" for the behaviour of children, given the adult perpetrators of the horrendous treatment of children detailed above were not gaoled. They were not fined.
In fact, the people who tortured children in detention and made their young lives a living hell were not even charged with any crime.
Given these adult perpetrators are still at large, what measures will Ms Finocchiaro take to ensure they do not re-offend?
And since locking up children as young as ten and subjecting them to spit hoods is considered age-appropriate, are we bringing back floggings only for those over 18 or will this also be okay for children ten and over?
Also on the agenda is the reintroduction of truancy officers to police school absences and holding parents accountable for their children’s criminal behaviour by threatening to have government benefits restricted.
Finocchiaro said:
“This is about making sure we give kids every opportunity in life to succeed, and that’s why our focus on getting kids to school is a very important part of our plan to reduce crime.”
It's obviously a mere coincidence and not blatant systemic racism that the majority of young offenders held in detention in the Northern Territory are Indigenous children.
No doubt Finocchiaro believes further disadvantaging their parents will give these kids "every opportunity in life to succeed", while simultaneously wearing spit hoods and living out their childhoods in prison.
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