Report to parliament states watch houses are an ‘inadequate place to keep young people overnight’ and are ‘harmful and traumatising’

The number of children aged 13 or under in Queensland’s adult watch houses has increased by 50% in 12 months, according to new statistics.

The statistics – which were included in a paper tabled by the Office of the Public Guardian in Queensland parliament on Tuesday – showed 120 children aged between 10 and 13 spent at least one night in a police watch house in 2023–24.

“Concerningly, this represented a 50% increase on 2022–23,” the report read.

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The number of children aged 17 or under detained for more than four nights consecutively increased to 675 from 640 in the previous year, it said.

The Queensland Family and Child Commission has previously said watch houses are an “inadequate place to keep young people overnight” and are “harmful and traumatising”.

Watch houses are temporary holding cells, usually inside police stations, designed to hold violent and dangerous adults and intended to be used for short periods. Many have become overcrowded – particularly after high-arrest police operations targeting children. The ongoing detention of young people in them has been compared to “abuse”.

Guardian Australia has reported on the treatment of children within the facilities, including those with intellectual disabilities and the failure to provide medical or psychological care to sick and suicidal children within the facilities.

Overcrowding is increasingly a problem in the system since the state government made breaching bail a criminal offence.

According to the report, there was a considerable increase in the number of problems reported to the office last year on behalf of children and young people detained in police watch houses.

“This increase in issues raised was largely attributable to higher numbers of both children in police watch houses and those experiencing a prolonged stay in a watch house,” the report said. “The most common issue raised in 2023–24 was the excessive lengths of stay of children and young people in police watch houses.”

The public guardian said that when the number of children detained increased, the number of allegations of police misconduct also increased. It also frequently observed a decline in the mental health of the children being detained, such as self-harm and behavioural incidents resulting in the use of force by police.

The office investigated 2,254 “issues” and made 90 formal complaints on behalf of children and young people in watch houses to agencies such as the department of youth justice and the Queensland police service, it reported.

The CEO of the Youth Advocacy Centre, Katherine Hayes, said almost none of the children held in watch houses have been convicted of a crime, and the bulk are on remand.

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“It just makes me want to cry, seeing the increase in damning statistics showing that kids continue to be mistreated while in the custody of the Queensland government,” she said.

“I really hope that the new government has an appetite to address these complex social problems.”

Hayes said for an 11-year-old child to be held in a watch house “they’ve got to have suffered some kind of mistreatment from their family, from their community”.

“To end up locked in a watch house cell with no daylight, no fresh air, inadequate food, inadequate assessment and treatment of health issues is just another shocking neglect of these kids.

“Often their guardian is the state. Their own guardian is neglecting them.”

In a pre-election interview the new premier, David Crisafulli, conceded the practice is “wrong” and promised there would be fewer held in them by the end of his term.

But Crisafulli has also acknowledged that his “adult crime, adult time” laws will mean more children behind bars longer in the short-term.

There were 33 children in watch houses in Queensland at 6am on Tuesday. According to Queensland police statistics, 24 of them had a First Nations background, compared with nine who were non-Indigenous. The longest had spent nine days behind bars.

Their use was ruled unlawful by the state supreme court in 2023, but state parliament passed laws permitting the practice retroactively, overriding the state Human Rights Act.

Source: www.theguardian.com