Shocking WA youth detention footage a stark reminder of what incarceration can do to children’s brains

Experts have been clear for some time: incarceration of children does not work. But Commonwealth, state and territory governments continue to bury expert advice that children as young as 10 should not be behind bars, an ABC Four Corners investigation has revealed.

The horrifying footage of guards pinning down, cuffing and “folding up” juvenile inmates at Western Australia’s Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre triggered emergency crisis talks in the state and reignited calls for the nation to stop locking up kids.

As pressure mounts on the Commonwealth, states and territories to raise the age of criminal culpability from 10 to 14, Crikey unpacks why prison, and the justice system more broadly, is no place for a child.

“Imagine how much energy it takes for a 10-year-old to behave to a level that results in incarceration,” neuropsychologist and youth counsellor Warrick Brewer said. “A child attracting the attention of police or welfare is a child in distress.”

The cohort of children in youth detention is the country’s most traumatised and cognitively impaired. Research from the Telethon Kids Institute found 89% of sentenced 10- to 17-year-olds at Banksia Hill had at least one form of severe neurodevelopmental impairment, while 36% had foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

They’ve lived through volatility and violence, “passed from pillar to post” through child protection services, and been deprived of fundamental needs. It’s a recipe for “powerful expressions” of emotion, Brewer said, and yet the Australian justice system is intent on calling that “criminal”.

“We are socialising children to make a link between their social need or hunger and criminality,” he said. “We’re socialising them into believing that the expression of that need is wrong or bad. It’s like not feeding a young child when it tells you it’s hungry.”

Children and adolescents rely on relationships for their cognitive and emotional development. Hauling children through foster care robs them of any chance to develop a “stable, organised, single attachment”, Brewer said. The alternative is a string of “superficial attachments” that prompts an equivalent response from the brain.

The absence of any meaningful attachment is only entrenched inside the justice system, with many managers and high staff turnover. One case worker for anger management, another for drug and alcohol abuse, another to manage criminal proceedings, another to deal with their family… and the list goes on. Brewer said it was not uncommon for kids in the system to be unable to name a single person they felt “watched over them” or taught them something because staff chopped and changed so much.

Without the opportunity to lay down an attachment, a child-turned-adolescent-turned-adult is locked into a pattern of broken relationships, crisis and oppositional defiance. Brewer said that was why you got a young adult presenting with the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old.

“They grow into big hulking 20-year-olds physically and cognitively, but emotionally they can’t keep up,” he said. “They act impulsively, can’t regulate emotional responses, and have poor judgment. It’s much like people describe a narcissist: they’re unable to think about the way their emotions impact others.”

University of Melbourne criminologist Dr Diana Johns said that incarceration of youth was “antithetical” to the way we understand a child: “They develop a sense of identity and who they are through social interactions. If you lock up a child, you tell them they are unloved, uncared for, and unworthy of investing in. You’re essentially saying you don’t belong and never will belong.”

Brewer said it’s a system “hyper-fixated” on outputs rather than root cause, and an indictment on Australia.

“It’s unconscionable to me that in a country like Australia, with the sum total of our resources, we have to show we have failed by locking up children who haven’t reached puberty yet,” he said.

Were you outraged by the Four Corners story, or do you think some of these children need to be locked up? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.