There is no daylight in the watch house. No window. No crack of sun that inches along the concrete somewhere among the mass of tiny police holding cells.
Inside there is no day or night; just a dim light globe that never switches off, and slowly dulls away any sense of time.
Nick*, 17, spent 32 days in a south-east Queensland police watch house, after he was remanded on a serious assault charge, because there was no room in the state’s youth detention centres.
He is one of hundreds of Queensland children who have been detained on remand for extended periods, their treatment likened to farm animals. Last week, the state suspended its own Human Rights Act to allow the ongoing detention of children in these conditions, to circumvent a court challenge and to carry on – in the words of the youth justice minister, Di Farmer – “business as usual”.
After about two weeks, Nick’s hair began to fall out. It gathered in black, tangled clumps on to the concrete floor and stuck to the bottom of his feet (socks are not allowed) as he walked back and forth. Five steps from the cell door to the back wall.
“There was a few nights where I was wishing that I wasn’t alive,” Nick told Guardian Australia in July. He agreed to be interviewed about his experience alongside his mother. He talks in a soft, considered way and takes a long pause after the word “alive”. His mum starts to cry.
“It gave me a lot of sadness [which] I tried my best not to show to the people inside,” Nick says.
“But since I’ve been out … it’s been a bit hard … I don’t know, it kind of doesn’t feel the same since before I was in there. I came out a different person.”
‘Hours and hours just staring at concrete’
Twice this year Queensland has suspended its own Human Rights Act – firstly to charge children with criminal offences for breaching bail conditions, and this week to circumvent a new legal challenge to the practice of detaining children in watch houses.
Those adult police holding cells are opaque places. Few people have access. Privacy laws, designed to protect the identities of children, act to prevent serious scrutiny of the way those children are treated.
While critics and surrogates have lambasted “human rights breaches” in an academic sense, first-hand insights into the reality of children’s experience is very limited.
“My cell was about half the size compared to [youth detention centres]. Just a little sink, a toilet with a half wall,” says Nick. “And my bed was just a concrete bench with three mats on top of it. My blanket was some disposable thing like [a sheer curtain]. Not a real blanket. No pillow.
“I never knew what time it was, I never saw daytime. There’s nowhere to go to see outside at all.
“The place … wasn’t really all that clean. I saw a cockroach run through once. It’s not clean. My feet would always be filthy. My room after two weeks you’d look on the floor and there was a bunch of hair on the floor.
“You can hear everything in the watch house. At 6am everyone wakes up and that’s just when the screaming begins. I remember so many nights sleeping was so difficult because of all the people screaming. The whole place was concrete, it will echo from the front of the watch house to the back, really loud.”
Nick says he expected to be transferred relatively quickly; then as time dragged on, the delay began to affect his mental health.
“I remember like around the eighth day, just breaking down in the room by myself, crying. Eight days. I’d never been in a watch house for that long. Eight days. Even eight days was crazy to me.
“At that time I was told that the centres were full and other watch houses were full. But it just wasn’t a good feeling in my head, wondering how long I was going to be there.
“Twenty-four hours of the day I’d be there, that’s 24 hours I’d be there just thinking. A lot of time to think. Your thoughts change around a bit, it’s weird being in such a small place for so long. It definitely takes a toll on your mental health.
“So many days it was just … hours and hours just staring at concrete.”
Breaching of Human Rights Act
A Guardian investigation into Queensland police watch houses has revealed that suicide attempts, mental health episodes and other incidents are “frighteningly common”.
Children are sleeping on the floor of cells and using mattresses or blankets to block CCTV cameras, and other detainees, from watching while they go to the toilet.
A fundamental concern about keeping children in police watch houses is that they are housed in facilities also hosting older men and women, who are potentially dangerous or drug affected. Queensland’s Human Rights Act demands that children accused of criminal offences must not be detained alongside adults.
“If they’d take me out of my cell I’d see all the adults, they’d see me, they’d be talking to me,” Nick said.
“I remember at one point I had a male adult see me walk past and then when I got back to my cell he was shouting something like he rapes little kids like me.”
The Queensland public guardian, Shayna Smith, told Guardian Australia a police watch house is “an unacceptable place for any child”.
Statistics show that young people engaged with the youth justice system are commonly in state care, disengaged from school, or are profoundly underprivileged.
Nick’s parents went to the watch house every day to advocate for him, with mixed success.
“We know there would be so many kids who don’t have anyone doing that,” his mum says.
“When we got to see him, he was sickly, white, I mean almost translucent. We just kept turning up and asking when he was going to be moved. And then it dragged on and on.
“Everyone could see this was not good for him, even the police, but they’d just say there was nothing they could do. And so he just stayed.”
‘An animal in a cage’
Since leaving youth detention and returning to live with his family, Nick says he has had trouble sleeping. He was previously diagnosed with depression, but says he has had more serious mental health issues in recent months.
“By the time I got out, I was definitely worn out from living like that.
“In my head I’ll never forget what it was like in there, I’ll always remember it. I don’t mean to think about it but sometimes it’s just there. It affected my sleep, being able to fall asleep.”
Prior to his charges related to an alleged serious assault, Nick had some minor criminal history but had never been held on remand before.
I ask him about the youth justice debate in Queensland that has, in some ways, allowed the community to turn a blind eye to these sorts of experiences. Does he think he deserved to be treated like that? Won’t – as some people argue – the tough experience make him want to stay out of trouble.
“I can definitely see that would make some kids angrier. They get mad at the police who are there. It doesn’t feel fair, being there for that long.
“If a kid does something wrong and he gets arrested, definitely he’s not going to learn without a punishment. But the watch house is not a punishment. That’s being in [youth detention] where they’re told what they can do or can’t do every day.
“You don’t have your freedom in [youth detention] but you can live there. Not happily, but you can be there in the detention centres and have some sense of happiness, other kids around you, going outside for walks in the sun.
“The watch house, I don’t think it’s good for anything more than two days. It’s like being an animal in a cage.”
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
