Australia’s human rights commission is seeking an urgent meeting with the West Australian premier after another Indigenous teenager died in custody.
Custodial staff found the 17-year-old boy in his cell at the Banksia Hill youth detention centre in Perth about 10pm on Thursday. He is believed to have taken his life.
It came less than a year after 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd died at the nearby Unit 18 detention facility.
The Australian Human Rights Commission said it had written to WA Premier Roger Cook seeking an urgent meeting to discuss youth justice policy and the operation of Banksia Hill.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds called on the federal government to urgently convene a national taskforce “to work together on the reform of child justice in this country based on evidence and human rights”.
“I am ashamed of the way Australia is treating our most vulnerable children,” Ms Hollonds said.
“Governments must be accountable for submitting children to cruel and degrading conditions which the evidence shows does nothing to prevent crime and instead causes terrible harm.”
Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay said serious concerns had been raised about Banksia Hill for years, including evidence given by the commission in 2022 before the United Nations committee against torture.
WA authorities have said the teenager was taken into custody at Banksia Hill on Tuesday and placed into an intensive supervision unit but there had been no concerns about his mental health.
Corrective Services Commissioner Brad Royce said the boy was checked by staff 10 times throughout the night on Thursday and was found unresponsive on the 11th visit.
Body-worn camera footage indicated the response from staff was appropriate, he said.
Aboriginal Legal Service WA chief executive Wayne Nannup said another young person dying in detention is “intolerable” and called for “nothing short of a full-scale overhaul of youth justice”.
“Aboriginal families, communities and organisations cannot keep carrying the burden of advocating for meaningful change,” he said.
“This government must pick up the mantle. Without political will, nothing will change and further lives are likely to be lost.”
Yamatji teenager Cleveland Dodd died in October 2023 after self-harming in his cell at Unit 18, a standalone youth facility at Perth’s Casuarina Prison.
His death – the first of a child in youth detention in WA on record – is the subject of a coronial inquest that has heard evidence about systemic failures preceding the incident.
An internal investigation is underway into the latest death and police are preparing a report for the coroner.
Greens senator and Yamatji Noongar woman Dorinda Cox said “an urgent inquiry” into youth deaths in custody is needed.
“As a society we should be outraged that another youth has chosen to take their life rather than remain at the hands of a barbaric and traumatising justice system,” she said.
“The current justice systems are killing our children and youth.”
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe also called for federal intervention, saying states and territories needed to be held accountable for deaths in custody.
Banksia Hill has been the site of numerous riots in recent years, including an incident in May 2023 that lasted more than 12 hours and involved 47 detainees, causing an estimated $30 million worth of damage.
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