UPDATE: July 26, 2016, 9:44 a.m. AEST Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has committed to a Royal Commission into the Northern Territory's juvenile detention system.
The joint inquiry with the NT Government will begin as early as possible, Turnbull said on ABC radio Tuesday, to "expose the culture that allowed it occur."
He continued, "We have here a very troubling state of affairs where clearly there has been mistreatment of young people."
The exact nature of the inquiry's scope is yet to be determined, but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner Mick Gooda has told Fairfax that while he supports the inquiry, "it needs to go larger than that."
Footage released Monday of the "torture" of juvenile boys has again drawn attention to accusations of institutional racism being levelled at the justice system in Australia.
The Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in the Northern Territory is being accused of gross mistreatment, including the excessive tear gassing of six boys been 14 and 17-years-old during what was described as a "riot." The boys were also kept in isolation for "almost 24 hours a day with no running water, little natural light and [sic] were denied access to school and educational material," according to a Four Corners investigation by the ABC.
The disturbing CCTV footage of the tear gassing, and stripping naked of a boy by staff is accompanied in the report by handheld footage shot by staff during the tear-gassing incident, in which they can be heard laughing at attempts by one teen to break out of his isolation cell. Staffers can be heard saying things like "f*cken idiot," as well as "I'll pulverise the little f*cker," and "f*cking gas them."
Staff at the centre were previously accused of forcing teens to fight each other and eat animal faeces for rewards of junk food, according to the ABC.
An independent report of the incident was released in 2015 by the NT Government and the centre was renamed following the tear gassing. The youth were moved into an old adult prison in Berrimah.
A statement supplied by the centre today says that “The events at the Done Dale Detention Centre, that have become the focus of the ABC report, occurred two years ago and have been the subject of a number of independent investigations and reviews.
"As a result of these investigations and reviews a series of recommendations have been accepted by Government and implemented by the Northern Territory Department of Correctional Services."
However, NT Children's Commissioner Colleen Gwynn told Four Corners that many of the report's recommendations were still not implemented, saying "The response has not been as urgent as we would have liked. The issues raised in that report are extremely serious and I would like to see a more full response."
Just like the nation's prison system more broadly, Indigenous prisoners are over-represented in the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre. In August last year, a story from the ABC stated that although not an Indigenous-specific facility, all prisoners at Don Dale were Indigenous.
Dion Brownfield of Indigenous Hip Hop Projects visited the centre last year to work with kids on a collaborative music video encouraging cultural pride and creative expression.
"We have a crisis on our hands," he told Mashable Australia. "I'd say 95 percent of the kids that were detained when I was up there probably should have been in a cultural healing space for their mental, emotional and social well-being.
"So getting back on country, re-connecting with their culture and with their old people. There were a lot of concerns I had with the mental health of the young people in there."
The incident comes just over a week since protests took place in Sydney and Melbourne showing solidarity between the Indigenous community and the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the U.S., following the recent deaths of Anton Sterling and Philando Castile.
The protests saw Barada, Barna and Kabalbara woman and organiser Yarramun Conole says, "It's time we brought the Black Lives Matter movement to Australia to affirm that our lives matter. We are the people who are most vulnerable in this country."
Brownfield believes the issue is of national importance and deserves international attention.
"It's a shame that we’re locking up Indigenous youth instead of looking at healing," he said. "The majority of kids in there have suffered major traumas in their life, and all they need is to be nurtured and respected. A lot of Government systems don't understand the pain, the oppression and the desperation of these kids. They need support and we're locking them up by the hundreds."
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In the 1980s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were dying in such high numbers while in police custody that a Royal Commission took place. Few of the commission's recommendations have been implemented, however. Since then, 365 people have died while in the custody of police, meaning the problem is worse than it was 25 years ago.
Indigenous Australians make up 3 percent of the overall population, but currently account for 27.4 percent of the prison population.
At the time of writing, it's unclear how many of the six boys involved in the tear gas incident were Indigenous-identified. But in a facility with such a large proportion of Aboriginal youths, and in a justice system that normalises their over-representation, it's hard not to see the centre's handling of the incident as indicative of a much wider problem.
One that Amnesty International has already labelled "institutional brutality."
Topics Black Lives Matter Racial Justice
