The Northern Territory Government cannot keep pretending that building a new youth prison “fixes” youth justice.
A new building does not remove violence.
A new fence does not create safety.
A new name does not undo the brutality of locking children in cages.
Freedom of Information documents obtained by the ABC reveal what our communities have been saying for years: children are not safe in NT children’s prisons, and they are being harmed while the government spins “wraparound services” and “rehabilitation” like slogans that can cover up trauma.
In the first 12 months after Holtze Youth Detention Centre opened, nine children were hospitalised after self-injury, alongside reports of sexual assaults, physical assaults, disturbances, escapes, and widespread property damage.
‘This isn’t a “fresh start.” It’s the same violence, the same despair, the same despair-driven resistance, with cleaner paint,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘Children are not only speaking the truth, they are living it. And when a child has no power, no voice that is taken seriously, no meaningful pathway to safety, they are forced to communicate in the only language the system allows: through their bodies,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘When children self-injure in custody, when they smash cells, when they try to escape, when they hunger strike they are not “problems to manage.” They are children screaming the only way they can: “I am not safe,” said Debbie Kilroy.
And instead of listening, governments respond with the same cruelty every time:
- more punishment
- more charges
- more isolation
- more surveillance
- more time inside
They criminalise the distress. They punish the symptoms. They ignore the cause.
‘Let’s be clear: children should not have to risk their lives to be believed. It is a national disgrace that Australia continues to warehouse children, overwhelmingly Aboriginal children, in prisons where self-injury, violence, and despair are predictable outcomes of confinement,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘The NT Government cannot keep hiding behind “community safety” while it harms children in its care.
If the government truly believed these places were safe, children wouldn’t be begging to go back to Don Dale. Children wouldn’t be tearing apart cells. Children wouldn’t be cutting their necks with broken panels because life is being slowly crushed out of them,’ said Tabitha Lean.
This is not “youth justice.”
This is abandonment.
‘A child in prison is a child the State has taken responsibility for, and the NT Government is failing that responsibility in real time,’ said Tabitha Lean.
We Demand Immediate Action
The National Network call on the NT Government to:
- Release children from prison now
- End the expansion of remand and punitive bail crackdowns
- Stop prosecuting children for survival responses inside prison
- Fund Aboriginal community-controlled, place-based care and support
- Invest in housing, health, education, disability supports, and family reunification, not cages
Because if we keep responding to harm with punishment, we are not preventing violence, we are producing it.
Shame on this nation. Shame on the Northern Territory Government.
You cannot build your way out of brutality with new prisons.
You cannot call a cage “therapeutic” and expect us to forget what we’ve seen.
You cannot keep ignoring children until they bleed loud enough to make headlines.
Free them. Now.
For further comment, please contact Debbie Kilroy on 0419 762 474 or Tabitha Lean on 0499 780 226
