Juvenile justice authorities in Western Australia have been unable to confirm how a lot time youngsters are spending locked of their cells due to points with a reporting system.
The extended confinement of detainees at Banksia Hill, the state’s solely youth detention heart, has been closely criticized by advocates and authorized observers.
WA’s Supreme Court docket final 12 months discovered a teenage boy had been unlawfully locked in his cell for at the very least 20 hours per day on 26 events over six months.
A category motion launched within the Federal Court docket on behalf of previous and current detainees alleges a teenage lady with autism was confined as much as 23 hours a day.
The state authorities has mentioned lockdowns are solely used as a final resort when there are essential incidents or employees shortages.
However at a parliamentary committee listening to on Wednesday, officers from the Division of Justice conceded they didn’t have dependable information recording of out-of-cell hours at Banksia Hill over the last monetary 12 months.
“We do have information of out-of-cell hours however a number of the time we won’t truly, hand on coronary heart, say they had been 100 per cent correct,” director-general Adam Tomison advised the listening to.
“We have truly conveyed that to numerous our bodies, together with the Kids’s Court docket as wanted.
“We have instituted different processes to try to higher observe out-of-cell hours.”
Dr Tomison mentioned points with the monitoring course of had come to gentle partly due to varied authorized actions filed in opposition to the division.
He mentioned Banksia Hill now had employees devoted to recording the out-of-cell hours, a requirement he described as “extremely onerous”.
“Clearly our techniques weren’t as much as scratch in contrast with the extent of scrutiny now required on out-of-cell hours,” he mentioned.
“I am assured we have now an affordable regime in place by way of monitoring the recording of these hours.”
A authorities response to a query tabled in parliament this week revealed there had been greater than 1100 events between August 25 and November 20 final 12 months the place youth detainees spent greater than 20 hours per day of their cell.
The figures included stand alone Unit 18 on the Casuarina males’s jail which is housing a small variety of youth detainees.
An in depth breakdown for Banksia Hill was unavailable as a result of the database was “flawed”.
