Hopes Cleveland Dodd inquest can deliver lasting change in WA's juvenile justice system

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

The way some of WA's most complex and vulnerable children have been failed in recent years has drifted from the headlines recently.
WARNING: This story discusses incidents of self-harm and contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died.
Part of that is a good thing, because conditions in youth detention have so markedly improved.
Lockdowns ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court are a thing of the past. Young people are out of their cells much more often and benefiting from a wide range of supports.
In theory, we're on the path to a safer society for everyone.
But the inquest into the state's first recorded death in youth detention, which probed more than a decade of troubles, has highlighted how similar progress in the past has been short-lived and eventually given way to a return to crisis.
It makes the government's next steps, to do more than bandaid over problems, so critical, even if they are taken out of the public eye.
The biggest bandaid to rip off is closing Unit 18, a hastily constructed youth detention facility inside the adult Casuarina Prison, where Cleveland Dodd fatally self-harmed nearly two years ago.
The government first promised to build a replacement facility in late 2023, but it took nearly a year to work out where to put it and commit $11.5 million for planning and early site works.
Nearly a year on again there is still no firm plans, no aimed completion date or money for construction.
"It's important you get these things right," Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia said during the week.
"It's important that the design is thorough, it is informed by a lot of work, not just with people like architects and prison authorities but also the people who work inside those youth detention facilities right now."
That is a fair point but it begs the question: why did that work only start after the state recorded its first death in youth detention, and more than a year after Unit 18 was opened?
Implicit in the decision to create Unit 18 was an acknowledgement that a second youth detention facility was urgently needed.
"The priority clearly at the time … was making the place safe, and that continued until the end of 2023 really," Papalia said during budget estimates, highlighting damage done to cells and a major riot.
Three years on though, the waiting game continues.
WA's top child advocate, Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, wants young people out of an adult facility "as soon as we can" — but said it was not a simple situation.
"A couple of our neurodivergent kids actually find it really helpful to be over there because it's way less frantic and way less busy," the Commissioner for Children and Young People said.
"What we need to do is make sure wherever our kids are, it is the best possible care and support."
Part of that, Ms McGowan-Jones said, was about the facilities.
But she said it was also about the supports available to young people to achieve the ultimate aim of detention — rehabilitation.
"We have done some really great cohort work with programmes and initiatives and supports [recently]," she said.
"We still need the right approach to individualised plans that look at this child, at this time, and what is going on for them and what is needed."
Among the 25 recommendations put to Coroner Philip Urquhart at an inquest into Cleveland's death, many are addressed at that aim.
But he also proposed another on Tuesday in an effort to learn from the mistakes of the past: hold a special inquiry into the systemic failures over the decade leading up to Unit 18's opening.
While some of that information came out during the inquest — including how rushed decisions to open the unit were — the law prevents the coroner from making official findings or recommendations which are not closely connected to Cleveland's death.
A special inquiry could make those findings, but would first have to be ordered by government, which seems unlikely.
It's also an idea which has not found a lot of support.
Ms McGowan-Jones said the money would be better spent on improving supports for those in detention and stopping others from going on to offend.
One of the people who would likely be called before that inquiry, former Corrective Services Commissioner Mike Reynolds, agreed.
Last year he told the ABC the state government never gave him the resources or support to do his job, especially as problems arose in youth detention.
"The coronial inquest has already thoroughly examined the circumstances, decisions and systemic factors leading to the opening of Unit 18," he said this week.
"A further inquiry risks duplicating that work without delivering new insights or practical solutions.
"Instead … I believe the focus should shift to implementing the recommendations where possible, improving conditions and outcomes in youth detention, and strengthening accountability in a way that delivers real change for young people, staff and the community."
His successor, Brad Royce, told media outside court this week that was exactly what he was doing.
"There's over 630,000 young people in this state and we're talking, at any one time, less than 100 in care," he said.
"They are in our care, we acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do and we'll continue to work hard in that space."
Cleveland's death — and another suicide in youth detention 10 months later — has given Royce the resources to do that work now.
One of his key challenges will be keeping the government's attention so that he continues to have those resources if everything goes to plan and youth justice issues drift further from the headlines.