Proposed legislation in the Northern Territory to ban routine strip searches and solitary confinement in youth detention centres is a “landmark” move that would leapfrog it ahead of other Australian states, the Human Rights Law Centre has said. Last week the NT minister for Territory Families, Dale Wakefield, introduced an amendment to the youth justice act, limiting the use of force and restraints in the youth detention system. It formed part of the NT government’s pledge to reform youth justice following the damning findings of the royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the NT, including the “overt punitive culture that permeated our youth detention facilities”, Wakefield said. Barson said there were far less invasive and degrading searches that officers could do, rather than the “thousands” of strip searches that the NT royal commission found were conducted on children every year. “The WA government has gone on the record and denied the existence of solitary confinement in youth justice facilities,” Barson said.

Source: The Guardian March 25, 2018 00:33 UTC