Nearly 400 Indigenous children and teens held in NT police watch houses over six-month period
Exactly how long the children were kept in the watch houses may never been known, however, with NT Police admitting they are recording erroneous time-spent-in-custody information.
The ABC has obtained nearly 60 pages of confidential NT Police data under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, tracking youths in custody from August 25, 2024, to March 5, 2025.
The Country Liberal Party government was elected on a tough-on-crime platform on August 24.
NT Police initially refused to release the data to the ABC, so it had to be sourced through FOI.
The data shows there were nearly 870 youth "custody events" in NT police watch houses over the six months.
The custody events involved 402 individual youths, some of whom were recidivist offenders.
Of the 402 youths, the dataset — which NT Police confirmed was correct — shows 388 were Indigenous.
A police spokesperson who confirmed the numbers said all watch houses were "managed through strict policy, procedures and instructions".
"The primary consideration in relation to people in police custody is the safety and welfare of the individual," they said.
The independent member for Mulka in the NT parliament, Yingiya Guyula, said children in watch houses were being "traumatised in a way that does not encourage rehabilitation".
"I have visited the watch house in Palmerston and holding people for days in these conditions is just cruel," he said.
The government lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 in October 2024.
As of 2024, there were 27,400 people aged between 10 and 17 in the NT.
It means around 1.5 per cent of children in that age bracket spent time in NT watch houses over the six months.
The statistics cover six NT watch houses, including the Peter McAuley Centre police headquarters in Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs and Palmerston.
Some are notoriously overcrowded, with windowless cells and the lights on 24 hours a day.
They are meant to be used only as a stopgap place for the youths to be processed after their arrests, before they are delivered to a newly built youth detention centre in Darwin.
Last week, the NT's Aboriginal legal aid service NAAJA revealed an 11-year-old girl had been left for a night and two days in the Palmerston watch house.
In March, a 15-year-old girl was held in the Palmerston watch house for three nights after the local court ceased after-hours bail reviews for young people.
The treatment of children in watch houses in Queensland has also been under scrutiny, with a state police review finding youths were spending an average of 161 hours in the facilities.
As part of the ABC's FOI request, NT Police released data logs showing how long each child had spent in custody.
The data indicated that, while the vast majority were in custody for less than 24 hours, some had spent up to 25 days at a time inside Palmerston watch house.
Others were recorded to have been kept in watch houses for six, seven or eight-day periods.
When asked to confirm the accuracy of the data, the NT Police spokesperson said it was erroneous:
"The Northern Territory Police Force can confirm that the data provided does not accurately reflect the actual time youths have spent in custody.
"While the report you received reflects what was recorded in the system at the time, it does not account for process variations that can affect how custody end times are calculated."
The spokesperson said police could not provide an accurate time frame for each of the 870 custody cases, as it would require "a manual analysis of each custody incident".
"No youths have been held in police watch houses for 25 days straight," they said.
In November 2023, NT Police replaced its decades-old crime data IT software with a new system named SerPro.
Initially budgeted at $45 million, the cost of rolling out SerPro increased to $58 million, and it's been plagued with issues since it began operating.
Nathan Finn, the president of the NT's police union, said he was not surprised the time-in-custody data was erroneous, considering the issues police faced with the system.
"Since the establishment of the SerPro system, we've seen a number of data issues and how that's been calculated," he said.
"We've seen this and raised these concerns over a number of periods of time since the implementation of [SerPro].
"[SerPro] probably creates a 25 per cent increase in workload in managing a prisoner … within the custody facility."
Mr Finn said it would be unprecedented for youths to be held for weeks at a time in watch houses.
"We have youth that are in custody sometimes for two days or three days at maximum, depending on where they're remanded to and the availability of transferring them into a correctional facility," he said.
He said the data issues needed to be fixed immediately.
"If the police force is receiving this data and it's incorrect, how are they guiding their own policies and procedures?" he said.
"How are they managing any risks that are identified, or any concerns that they may have in the custody space?"
Mr Guyula agreed that the erroneous data needed to be fixed immediately.
"We don't trust the information that we are being given," he said.
"The police data shows some children are being held in watch houses for long periods, even weeks.
"If the data is not correct, the police need to provide the correct data.
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