Australian juvenile prison at bursting point

An inspection of Banskia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre has found it is under pressure from a surge in inmates being remanded at the centre.

The centre, which was once considered "one of the best performing institutions", was suffering from an increase in population, change of population mix, insufficient staffing and lack of infrastructure.

Acting Inspector of Custodial Services Barry Cram found in his report that female detainees were being inappropriately housed at the Rangeview Juvenille Remand Centre because of the rise in the number of boys being held at Banksia.

Currently 60 percent of the total population of juveniles in custody are on remand.

"The result is Banksia Hill is now routinely managing a more volatile, unsentenced (sic), shorter-stay male population, and Rangeview housing sentenced females without the facilities or adequate services to meet their needs," Mr Cram wrote.

"A wholly unsatisfactory situation."

He found that not enough had been done since the 2005 inspection and has requested that separate facilities be developed for young offenders and remand and sentenced juveniles, with a dedicated purpose-built precinct for sentenced juvenile females.

A plan to develop 24 beds at Banksia was labelled a late response to the crisis, since the beds would not be ready until next year.

Mr Cram said the increase in beds also lacked funding support for educational programs and case management needed for the extra inmates.

"Banskia Hill is already short of services and programs venues, interview rooms, office space, etc," he wrote.

"The proposal also offered no solution to the significant issue of future accommodation planning for the sentenced girls, who clearly needed their own dedicated precinct if not facility.

"We called for a comprehensive review of the infrastructure needs and integrated accommodation planning, not only for Banksia Hill but for the Juvenile estate as a whole."

He hoped the State government's commitment to build a $40 million Young Offenders Prison, with a capacity for 80 non-violent male young offenders between the ages of 18 and 22, would help relieve the pressure.

Meanwhile most of the security systems at Banksia Hill were found to be "failing, ageing or obsolete" and the centre needed repairing and upgrading.

Mr Cram also found evidence of bullying among staff and a lack of confidence in the Department of Corrective Service’s official anti-bullying strategy and staff grievance process.

Staff were also dealing with the stresses of working over-time to fill staff vacancies, which was costing the department more than $800,000 and four times the recommended budget.

The report has made eight recommendations to the Department of Corrective Services, including recruiting more workers, reducing strip-searches, a better feedback system, more Aboriginal-focused programs and improving visitor facilities.

Mr Cram commended the strong social environment between staff and detainees and said detainees, staff and visitors felt safe most of the time.

The Commissioner for Children and Young People WA Michelle Scott said the report demonstrated the government needed to make youth justice a priority.

She said Australian states were far more advanced in providing effective intervention services to avoid detaining youths.

“Despite having a far larger population, the number of young people detained in Victoria is less than one third of Western Australia’s juvenile detention centre population," she said.

“More needs to be done to address the trends identified by the auditor general which shows fewer young people are being directed away from court in WA.

“These trends show that WA authorities are not using detention as the absolute last resort as required by the Young Offenders Act 1994.

“I support the report’s statement that strong leadership and better planning are required to help guide both the future of the juvenile detention centres and of the WA youth justice system more broadly.”

She also supported the creation of more practical programs for Aboriginal children at the centre.