Sounds: Don Dale (The Shame of Detention Centres in Australia)

In 2014, journalists uncovered footage of abuse and punishment of vulnerable teenagers at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin. Whilst it was reported as riot where the boys had escaped the isolation wing and attacked staff with weopons, the footage revealed something else entirely - tear gas being pumped into an area where a boy had escaped into, which also leaked into where five more were locked in the cells. Footage showed they weren't misbehaving at the time. The boy who'd escaped can be heard how long he'd been isolation and whether or not he could talk to staff, whereupon the prison staff laughed and mocked him, calling him an a 'little fucker' and an 'idiot'. The boys reported being incredibly distressed, suffering from nightmares and flashbacks, and being scared for their own lives. They'd been hiding behind mattresses, gasping for air, bending over loos.

This wasn't an isolated incident - boys were kept in 24 hour isolation for weeks on end, in cells with no running water or natural light, and couldn't access educational material. Now, if the UN's expert on torture said there are *no circumstances that justify young people being held in solitary confinement', this is worse than that - it was prolonged and systemic. Later, damages were offered for battery - spit hoods were placed on then, they were shackled, handcuffed.

That was 2014. Four years later? They're still calling to shut it down - it's a retired adult prison that is widely known to be unsuitable for children. Riots inside prisons aren't because kids are happy - they are clearly a call for help. And the boys? All in prison, after committing further serious crimes. Clearly, whatever 'system' of rehabilitation in the detention centres does not work, but creates ongoing trauma and issues that will pass down through generations. And it's not just this isolated centre either, as Amnesty International remind us in the image below.

We're actually the worst for juvenile detention - even worse than America. And if you're an Aboriginal male? You're far more likely to be locked up for minor offences - for stealing chocolate, perhaps, or graffiting. Once you're in the system, there's little escape from it. West Australian prisons are notorious for killing indigenous kids - beaten, or suicide. Over 80 percent of the prison system are Aboriginal Australians - yet we dare to shake our heads at the penal system in America as if we're the lucky country.

In response to the suicide of an Aboriginal boy in prison, journalist Gerry Georgatos writes:

There is nothing as profoundly powerful as forgiveness. The forgiveness of others validates self-worth, builds bridges and positive futures. What is missing from the criminal justice system and the penal estate are the cultures of forgiveness and redemption. Forgiveness cultivated and understood keeps families and society solid as opposed to the corrosive anger that diminishes people into the darkest places, into effectively being mental unwell. Anger is a warning sign to becoming unwell. Love comes more natural to the human heart despite that hate can take one over. In the battle between love and hate, one will choose love more easily when in understanding of the endless dark place that is hate and of its corrosive impacts. Hate can never achieve what love ever so easily can. Hate and anger have filled our prison and juvenile detention centres with the mentally unwell, with the most vulnerable, with the poor – and not with the criminally minded. Like so many others, I have worked to turn around the lives of as many people in jail as I possibly could, but for every inmate or former inmate that people like me dedicate time to in order to improve their lot – ultimately there is a tsunami of poverty related issues and draconian laws that flood ‘offenders’ into prisons. Jailing the poorest, most vulnerable, the mentally unwell, in my experience, only serves to elevate the risk of reoffending, of normalising disordered and broken lives of digging deeper divides between people, of marginalising people. It has been my experience that in general people come out of prison worse than when they went in. Of course violence breeds violence, hate breeds hate but yet we jail and punish like there is no tomorrow. One of society’s major failures is the punitive criminal justice system. Despite an evidently failed penal estate we continue on with it. For too many it has become easier to lie and act as if the failure is a success or as if there are not alternatives. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the Brothers Karamazov, wrote, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect ceases to love.". Johnny Warramarrba’s mother died when he was a baby. His dad was killed in a car accident when he was eleven. When he committed his less than $90 worth of ‘crimes’ – the stealing of pens and stationary – his grandmother was seriously ill in Darwin Hospital. The boy came from Groote Eylandt. I recently spent time at Groote Eylandt, and in its three communities. It is a closed island where permission is required to visit. The impoverishment of the people is stark despite the high cultural content. Only three students have ever graduated high school. But on Groote Eylandt there is the GEMCO manganese mine – one of the richest such projects in the world. The FIFOs have it well – I stayed where they do in Anungu however it is a different story for the rest of the island. Talk about Native Title failing a community. In general, Native Title is a longstanding debacle as a holistic compensatory mechanism. I spent time on Groote Eylandt in responding to the suicide related trauma of a family who lost their 13 year old daughter in April. The island community had a resident counsellor predominately for the FIFOs but no resident counsellors for the locals. I met with the Land Council and we agreed that half a million dollars be set aside for two resident counsellors – female and male.The degradation of homeland communities across northern and western Australia is the work of one government after another, who are responsible either in stripping social infrastructure and assets from these communities or who have denied the equivalency of services and opportunities to these communities when compared to non-Aboriginal communities. It was reported that in the week after Johnny’s suicide, that a 22-year-old Groote Eylandt man was sentenced to jail for a Christmas Day ‘crime’ in 1998. He was found guilty of stealing biscuits and cordial from the GEMCO storeroom. Jamie Wurramara was jailed for a so-called $23 crime.

This song captures the awfulness of it all in a screaming Australian punk that empathises with the 15 year old Aboriginal boy that was the subject of the gassing. I heard it on the radio the other day and was so moved at his plaintive wails at the end. He's 15, he screams - he doesn't deserve this, and knows it. This song made me cry. I'd say enjoy it, but instead, feel fucking mad.

Language warning.

I hear keys rattlin', dogs barkin'
Some no neck fucks got his knee in my back
Tellin me I'm a risk to myself
Reckon hes lookin' after my health
While hes strippin' me naked
Hand on my throat, reckon hes a fighter

I reckon hes a coward
I reckon hes a coward, yep!

How you gonna fix anything with those dogs/cunts in charge
They're the ones that need help, not me
I'm 15, hes 33
Turns the light off, turns the light off
While he flogs me, and I'm stressin'
Hes on the payroll, I'm on the fuckin' pavement
Again!
Again!
Again!

Sprayed and flagged
Beaten and flogged
Degraded
Deflated
Bagged and tagged
Chains on my wrists and ankles
Playin' up at school, chains on my wrists and ankles
These plastic ties pulled too light
Bagged and tagged
Degraded
Deflated
But some bloke/cunts do a UFC
But you're tellin' me that I'm unhealthy
This blokes/cunts do a UFC
You're tellin' me I'm unhealthy

And then I did nothin', nothin that bad anyway

Does he know how lucky he is?
I threw somethin' at his head but I missed
Someone threw it again but it missed
Someone threw it again

I'm screamin'
But I don't know what I'm sayin'
I'm hysterical, bull at a gate
Bull in a China shop
I'm irate

I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15
I'm 15, I'm 15

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