CCTV footage of a juvenile prisoner in WA being restrained by guards (Image: ABC Four Corners)

Horrifying new footage aired on the ABC shows prison officers dragging a boy to the ground and restraining him, twisting his legs behind him and sitting on top of him, holding him down. The boy was in solitary confinement in detention in Western Australia’s only juvenile prison, Banksia Hill.

Six years after the ABC’s Four Corners first exposed the use of spit hoods and tear-gassing of juvenile inmates in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, serious allegations of excessive force on child detainees continue.

WA’s justice department has defended the restraint as a “last resort” despite a royal commission — at least into the Don Dale centre — which found the use of body weight while an inmate was in this prone position posed a serious risk of injury or death. The practice, in which detainees are “folded up” or “hogtied”, is so risky that it has been banned in Queensland youth detention centres.

The new footage comes after years of repeated calls to raise Australia’s age of criminal culpability from 10 to 14 years, phase out inhumane methods of restraint, cease subjecting children to solitary confinement, and ultimately shut down these centres.

Banksia Hill holds 10-to-17-year-olds, including those sentenced serving time, convicted awaiting sentencing, and youth arrested awaiting bail or trial. Annually 600 young people are detained there. Earlier this year, 17 of Banksia Hill’s most “problem” children were relocated to the maximum-security adult Casuarina Prison.

It’s estimated that across Australia, 600 children under the age of 13 are locked up, with thousands more processed through the criminal justice system. These high rates combined with well-documented mistreatment of juveniles within the justice system are deemed out of step with UN human rights conventions that Australia is a party to.

Last month, Australia failed to meet obligations when it blocked UN officials access to its prisons (juvenile and adult).

Transparency is an ongoing issue — one of the boy’s family members told the ABC she wants the footage to be released to expose how detainees are treated: “I want them to remember this is a young boy, not a man. A kid.”