Federal government under pressure to intervene in NT incarceration 'crisis'
The NT's prison population has soared to unprecedented levels in recent months, with prisoners locked up inside police watch houses for days on end due to a lack of beds at correctional facilities.
In one recent incident, an 11-year-old Aboriginal girl who was initially denied bail was detained overnight inside Palmerston's overcrowded police watch house, where the lights remain on 24 hours a day.
The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency's (NAAJA) acting chief executive, Anthony Beven, has called on the federal government to suspend Commonwealth funding for remote policing and other justice-related operations until the NT government changes its hardline approach to crime.
Since the Country Liberal Party came to power last year, the NT government has lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 back to 10 and introduced tougher bail laws for both adults and children.
Mr Beven said the measures were not working to reduce crime and were leading to large numbers of Aboriginal people being incarcerated.
"One of the unique things we have here in the Northern Territory is that the Commonwealth actually funds the Northern Territory police for remote policing and other options," Mr Beven said.
The NT Police Force was budgeted to receive about $50 million in Commonwealth funding in 2024-25.
Mr Beven also said NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro had so far refused to meet with NAAJA and other Aboriginal leaders to discuss strategies aimed at reducing crime.
In a statement, Federal Indigenous Australians Minister Marndirri McCarthy said: "There is something very wrong with the Northern Territory justice system when an 11-year-old girl is held in an adult police watch house for two days and one night."
"It is primarily Northern Territory bail laws that are driving this issue," she said.
Ms McCarthy said the NT government had previously committed to reducing the incarceration rates of First Nations people under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
NT Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby slammed Mr Beven's comments as "utterly absurd".
"Threatening to cut essential funding to remote policing is counterproductive, dangerous, and undermines community confidence," Ms Boothby said in a statement.
"There is no alternative: those who break the law will be arrested.
"Corrections will continue to expand capacity to ensure those who are remanded or sentenced have a bed, because that's what the community expects."
Ms Boothby said the adult prison in Berrimah, on Darwin's outskirts, would be expanded to accommodate an extra 238 prison beds by mid-August.
Ms Finocchiaro has been contacted for comment.
The situation in the Northern Territory comes amid growing international concern about youth justice in Australia.
In a letter to the federal government in May, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards, and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Albert K Barume, singled out the NT's record on human rights.
"Several states and the Northern Territory are announcing new 'tougher' criminal legislation, which seem to give little regard to international human rights standards," they wrote.
The letter said there was an "ongoing pattern" of First Nations children being disproportionately incarcerated, noting that in the Northern Territory, Indigenous children are 32 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous children.
It also said the NT government's decision to reduce the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 was "a step backwards", and criticised the lifting of a ban on spit hoods being used on children.
"Spit hoods … are considered inherently in violation of the prohibition of torture and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," they wrote.
The federal government has not responded to the letter in the requested 60-day timeframe.
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