The “padded cells” at the Cairns police watch house have walls like concrete. The floor slopes down to a grate at the front that, an officer says, collects “urine, blood, whatever, that goes slowly towards the drain”. A CCTV image obtained by Guardian Australia offers a rare glimpse into the sorts of rooms being used to hold children in Queensland watch houses, where they are kept indefinitely – sometimes for several weeks – waiting for a bed in the overcrowded youth detention system.
The violent detention cell in Cairns has no toilet or running water. Sources say it has been used to hold some of the most vulnerable children in the lockup, including those with intellectual disabilities or exhibiting mental illness, who become distressed and violent during long periods inside.
Last year Queensland suspended its Human Rights Act to allow the detention of children in police watch houses.
Punitive law-and-order policies in the state have pulled record numbers of children into a criminal justice system that cannot cope with the influx. Detention centres are operating above their “safe capacity” and children have been kept for long periods in solitary confinement. Others have been kept in police cells – designed for adults and overnight stays – for weeks on end.
In the far north, the lockups are now overflowing. In Mount Isa last year the watch house was at 156% capacity. In Cairns an influx of adult prisoners has created problems for police officers running the facility and having to care for more than a dozen children.
On 10 January a child was charged with assault for allegedly throwing coffee on a police officer while waiting for breakfast. Last week a prisoner set fire to a blanket. Workers say there have been other flare-ups and that crowding and conditions have reached “a tipping point”.
The Queensland inspector of detention services on Friday confirmed it was undertaking a formal inspection of the Cairns watch house.
A ‘cry for help’ over alleged human rights abuses
This month, a senior police officer at the watch house, Sgt Damien Taylor, sent an email to various agencies complaining of “unrealistic expectations”. He said police “cannot meet” expectations to care for young people, including providing snacks and toilet paper.
Andrea Bates, a senior psychologist who worked at the Cairns watch house, sent a “cry for help” letter on Monday to colleagues and senior state officials outlining allegations of human rights abuses, including claims children are not being provided adequate food, medical attention or legal support.
Bates detailed cases including one where a child with a “serious mental health condition” was kept in isolation, unable to be assessed or treated. Her observations include children being kept four to a cell, stacking up foam mattresses for privacy. Some refused to shower due to a lack of privacy. Guardian Australia reported several similar concerns raised bythe youth organisation Youth Empowered Towards Independence (Yeti) last year.
“I am not a noisy outlier,” Bates says in her letter. “The observations and the harms I’m about to highlight here within, have been raised many, many times by our workforces across government and by Yeti.”
Katherine Hayes, the chief executive of the Youth Advocacy Centre, says the issues that emerged amid overcrowding in watch houses were “completely foreseeable” and that authorities had a duty of care to look after young people in custody.
“The override of the Human Rights Act has given an implicit endorsement to disregard the proper treatment of these kids and almost assist in the ongoing dehumanising of them,” she said.
“We’ve had many instanced of officers using food and access to family as behaviour management measures.”
Asked about the situation at a press conference on Wednesday, the police minister, Mark Ryan, acknowledged there were “capacity constrains across the custodial network” but said police were meeting the needs of people in watch houses.
“But there is an observation here,” Ryan said. “When you have stronger laws with harsher penalties, you end up with more people in custody. Many in the community have asked for those stronger laws and harsher penalties.”
‘A death in custody waiting to happen’
In August last year the youth justice minister, Di Farmer, sent a statement defending the suspension of the Human Rights Act to keep children in police custody.
“It is necessary to keep some young people in a watch house – for their safety, for the safety of our staff and the safety of the community,” Farmer said.
Farmer did not address questions this week about whether – having cited those concerns for urgent changes to state laws – she felt any obligation to act now, amid mounting and credible concern that the situation inside watch houses presented a serious risk to young people, workers and others.
Bates said conditions had led to “increasing assault rates against QPS [Queensland police service] staff, increasing risk to clinicians and increasing risks to the mental health and wellbeing of our collective workforces in this space”. She said young people took their frustrations out on police.
Taylor, in his email, said measures were needed “to reduce the number of assaults” on officers.
Speaking on ABC Radio National after Guardian Australia’s reporting, the Queensland Police Union president, Ian Leavers, said that with watch houses in north Queensland well above capacity, police “cannot provide the care and the basic human rights which every person deserves”.
“Watch houses are only for short-term stays; they’re not designed for long-term stays,” Leavers said.
“We’re really being set up to fail. It is an incredible risk. It is an unacceptable risk. And I am in fear that it’s a death in custody waiting to happen.”
System broken
Last year the Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC) released the findings of a watch house study titled, Who’s responsible
The conclusion: “No one.”
“We heard from courts, police, youth justice and legal providers about how each other was responsible for the causes of and solutions to this issue,” the report said.
“The separation of responsibilities across police, courts and youth justice means no one is directly responsible or accountable for how long a young person spends in a watch house, and while demand and capacity pressures occur across multiple systems it is the young people that are left without an effective response.”
The QFCC principal commissioner, Luke Twyford, said there had been a “shocking escalation” in the amount of time children spent in watch houses.
In 2022 21 children were detained in a watch house in Queensland for 15 days or more. In just the first six months of 2023 108 children were held for more than two weeks.
“The tragedy is there are many good people in all our departments and all our services trying to get all the right outcomes, but the system is leading us to detain young people for up to seven weeks,” Twyford said.
“There’s a deep frustration that we’re not being effective in our response.
“Watch houses are an inappropriate place to keep any young person for an extended period of time. They’re not a place to meet young people’s needs.”
In her letter Bates said the “multi-agency” approach adopted by the state government was like “an orchestra with no conductor”.
“Those of us working in the field are being effectively silenced and forced to play on while the Titanic sinks.”
Asked about concerns with the multi-agency approach, Farmer said: “The management and operation of Queensland watch houses is the responsibility of the Queensland police service.”
Farmer said the department assessed all young people in watch houses daily and that additional access had been granted to support services and youth justice staff.
“In addition to three meals a day provided, [the Department of] Youth Justice are providing additional food for young people, including morning and afternoon tea,” Farmer said.
Twyford said reports about the Cairns watch house were “especially concerning” and needed to be addressed urgently.
In her letter Bates said she and others had already been driven to the point where they could not continue.
“The sad indictment of the situation that we all find ourselves in currently is that good people, who have only the best of intentions for our cohort, are passionate about social justice and do their best to support their colleagues, walk away broken with despair,” she said.
