Warning: this text discusses distressing themes, together with suicide.
The ABC have reported that a teen has taken his personal life whereas in custody at Banksia Hill Detention Centre final night time.
In a media convention this morning, WA Premier Roger Prepare dinner confirmed that the 17-year-old youngster was discovered unresponsive of their cell by workers.
“An inner investigation is now underway, and police are getting ready a report for the coroner,” he mentioned.
Premier Prepare dinner mentioned that he was assured “by way of the way in which we’re managing our juvenile detention services.”
{The teenager} had solely arrived on the detention centre two days earlier than he died and was out of his cell for many of yesterday afternoon.
Commissioner of Corrective Providers Brad Royce mentioned that the teenage boy was checked on 10 occasions and on the eleventh event he was discovered unresponsive.
Mr Royce mentioned workers have been carrying radios and body-worn cameras and that he’s happy with how the state of affairs was dealt with by workers.
He died eight days later in hospital.
It was reported that earlier than his passing, Mr Dodd made eight threats of self-harm, requested medical assist a number of occasions and interfered with surveillance of his cell.
Calls on the federal government to intervene in youth detention system
Unbiased Senator Lidia Thorpe is asking for pressing federal intervention into the kid jail system.
“The federal authorities must work with First Peoples, and the well being and neighborhood sectors, to create sturdy federal frameworks that maintain the states and territories accountable and cease the abuse,” she mentioned.
Senator Thorpe says that governments should transfer to shut kids’s prisons, in favour of evidence-based options centered on care and wellbeing.
“Their failure to behave over a long time has led to this, and can result in extra deaths if severe motion isn’t taken. We should cease placing kids into these brutal prisons. Shut them down.
“The period of prisons, surveillance and policing of youngsters should finish. We should think about a distinct future our youngsters, one based mostly in care.
“For many years we’ve been calling out for change, however similar to jail guards ignore the calls of youngsters, authorities’s ignore the calls of grieving moms and communities to lastly take motion on deaths in custody,” she mentioned.
Human rights organisation Amnesty Worldwide are condemning the Western Australian authorities and calling for the closure of Banksia Hill youth detention centre.
“What number of occasions, by what number of consultants, does the WA authorities must be warned concerning the risks of their youth detention centres?”
“What number of extra Aboriginal kids will die earlier than the WA authorities closes down these inhumane, harmful youth prisons?” mentioned Indigenous rights campaigner Kacey Teerman from Amnesty.
Commissioner Hollonds made 24 suggestions, together with elevating the age of legal duty to 14 throughout all states and territories, banning solitary confinement and constantly monitoring all youngster detention services.
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