The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) ruled on Monday that the conditions in which three teenagers were held breached their rights. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
The case was brought by three teenagers separately detained in the Cairns watch house between June 2021 and 2022. They were aged between 13 and 17 at the time.
The tribunal found that the conditions violated their rights to be treated with humanity and respect, to privacy, to education, and to protection. The Cairns watch house is designed to detain adults for "one to three days," but not children.
The three children were held in cells with no natural light; one child described their detention as "like being in a closed brick box." They were required to use the toilet in front of other children and on CCTV, within earshot of "screaming" adults, were not provided clean clothes daily, and were denied access to adequate education or any way to pass the time.
Over a one-year period, one child was detained twice, the longest for 11 days; the second child three times for up to nine days; and the third child ten times for up to 12 days.
One of them, known as DC, was made to wear an anti-suicide smock and detained in a padded cell. Another 13-year-old was placed in a padded cell as punishment for banging on his cell door after 8:30 pm.
DC also told QCAT he was "verbally threatened by the watch house officers." The tribunal found that when told a person had died in a car accident, a watch house officer said, "Shut up you wimp, stop fucking crying, that's what happens when you little cocksuckers steal cars. Your friend's dead now, there's nothing you can do so shut the fuck up."
QCAT ordered the state of Queensland to make an apology for its breach of human rights. Judicial member Peter Murphy ruled the children had also been discriminated against, but was overruled by members Stephen Lumb and Elizabeth Gaffney. As a result, the state will not be required to pay compensation.
Murphy wrote the state would have been liable for detaining them unlawfully but retroactively exempted itself from liability in legislation passed in 2023 under Labor.
Youth Advocacy Centre CEO Katherine Hayes said that, like other human rights cases, there were no consequences for the state's breach aside from "public shame." The case only applied to the specific facts of the three children but was also a general condemnation of the system. "Those facts are replicated every day across Queensland when kids are held, particularly in the Cairns watch house, more than two to a cell, which is happening today," she said.
There are now 45 children in adults-only watch houses, with stays of up to 12 days. Hayes said even the newest watch house, the Wacol remand centre, does not provide children natural light. "If you had any humanity, you wouldn't want to treat kids that way."
Minister for Police Dan Purdie did not answer questions about whether the government would make the apology, blaming the former Labor government. He said the government had invested $16 million in "a full system overhaul."