I was a 13-year-old kid when I was first incarcerated. They took me from my home for wagging school and locked me up in what they called the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Hospital in Brisbane. But the name didn’t change what it really was: a children’s prison. Fifty years later, after decades of fighting to abolish the carceral system that caged me, I can tell you with certainty that very little has changed. Australia is still locking up its children.
The recent announcements by the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party (CLP), which has committed to lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 and reintroducing spit hoods in children’s prisons, highlight how little progress has been made. In Queensland, where a state election looms, the conservative Liberal National Party (LNP) is running a scaremongering campaign, clamouring for votes with policies like “adult crime, adult time,” harsher penalties for young offenders, and even youth boot camps. These policies are little more than recycled tactics; designed to win votes but destined to fail our children, just as they failed me five decades ago.
The fact that my story could be ripped from the 1970s and transplanted into today’s news cycle without missing a beat demonstrates that fundamental issues remain unchanged. Incarceration is still the default response to childhood behaviours, especially for marginalised children. I was locked up at 13 for truancy; today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being mass imprisoned at alarming rates. More than half of the children locked up last year in Australia were Indigenous — a staggering statistic that speaks to the ongoing racial inequalities embedded in our legal system.
As a young child, I could tell the prison I was placed in didn’t operate in the best interests of the girls it held. There were girls who were seriously unwell and really needed to be in a proper hospital, not a prison called a hospital. Though the place was run on a medical model managed by psychiatrists, you were still locked in a facility — unable to leave — for your “care” and “protection”. The reality is that we are still weaponising “care” today, in many shapes and forms. We use different language and different legislation, but we still use the power of the state to criminalise and imprison children for “their own good”.
I was in and out of that prison until I turned 17, and I spent those years from the age of 13 being told I was good for nothing, that I’d never make anything of myself, and that I was bad. I also spent a lot of time in padded cells and isolation, and I withstood a lot of cruelty. Even though I grew up in a poor family, I never experienced any of the harms that I experienced in that child’s prison in my own home. It took me being taken into the “care” of the state to experience that level of harm.
This country routinely inflicts harm upon children and the fact that the Northern Territory CLP plans to reintroduce spit hoods, which were previously banned after public outcry over their use on children in Don Dale, is evidence of that. The planned reintroduction sends a chilling message. It says that despite the royal commissions, despite the damning reports, despite the deaths in custody and despite children climbing onto prison roofs in desperate acts of protest over conditions at Don Dale prison, this country is still choosing cruelty over care.
Meanwhile, Queensland’s LNP is campaigning on a “law and order” platform that centres on punishing children and whipping up hysteria about a so-called “youth crime crisis”. Their proposal for “adult crime, adult time” suggests that kids — many of whom have suffered trauma, neglect, and systemic disadvantage — should be treated as adults. We know this approach only deepens harm to children and society as a whole.
They’re also pushing a $50 million “Regional Reset Program” to impose 24/7 intensive intervention for so-called “troubled” children. Children who haven’t even attended court for any offence, or who are simply the younger siblings of people in the system, are being flagged for this intervention. The implications are staggering — these kids are being profiled not based on their actions, but on assumptions rooted in systemic biases of race, gender, poverty and familial relationships.
The idea that kids, many of whom have never been involved in the criminal legal system, should be yanked from their families, schools, and communities to face programs that reinforce discipline and consequences is outrageous. These types of programs label kids as “high-risk” even though they haven’t committed any crimes, dragging them into a punitive system based on mere suspicion.
This isn’t prevention — this is pre-emptive punishment, criminalising kids for simply living in over-policed, marginalised communities. I reject the idea that these kinds of programs offer any real solutions to the challenges faced by children and families. Instead, they further alienate kids from their communities, casting them as suspects in a system that profits off fear and control.
This dangerous move is on track to create a new wave of Stolen Generations. The LNP’s idea of early intervention is just another excuse to tear Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children away from their families and communities, dragging them back to the protection era. The LNP is taking on the role of new mission managers, and its plan is a blueprint for the historical injustice of forced removals — ripping children from their cultural and familial ties and pushing them into child-stealing systems. Our children deserve support within their communities, not forced separation and institutionalisation.
We are witnessing the same tough-on-crime rhetoric dominating political discourse with the LNP using our children — children much like me 50 years ago. The LNP is calling these kids the “untouchables,” but the reality is that these kids aren’t untouchables because they are not the problem here. The problem is the stale, washed-up politicians who are rolling out the same old populist policies demonising our children in a desperate attempt to win an election. Our children are nothing more than election fodder for them. If the LNP get elected in Queensland on October 26, they will be the untouchable ones. If they implement these kinds of initiatives, the impact on our communities will be devastating, and there will be no turning back. Their proposals are not about care — they’re about racism and control.
Children’s prisons remain violent places designed to label, punish, and surveil kids, not to address the root causes of their behaviour — behaviour that is a natural response to poverty, trauma, racism and systemic neglect. Instead of helping, these institutions compound the very issues they claim to solve. The answers are not in harsher penalties or more policing. The system itself is the problem. We need to be bold enough to imagine a world where children aren’t caged but supported to thrive in their communities.
The cost of imprisoning a child in Australia is nearing a million dollars per year in NSW. Imagine what that money could do if we spent it keeping kids safe in their homes, providing educational support, or funding mental health services. The answer isn’t more punishment; it’s care, support, and investing in communities. It’s about addressing systemic inequality and, most importantly, believing that every child deserves a future beyond a cage.
As I mark 50 years since my first incarceration, I continue to call for change — not just for the children of my past, but for the children of today. Let’s work together to build a system based on care and abundance, not harm and punishment. Because when we all do well, we all do well.
It’s time to stop caging our children because nothing changes if nothing changes.
