Children are being held in an “overwhelmingly institutional” watch-house centre with little if any access to fresh air, few opportunities to call home and no privacy, according to a new report.
The Queensland Inspector of Custodial Services has released a report based on its inspections of Wacol Youth Remand Centre.
This centre was originally designed and built to be a police watch-house, but was repurposed by the state government due to overcrowding in other youth prisons.
It currently holds children who have recently been arrested across Queensland. Thus it serves as a waiting centre before they can be moved to another youth detention facility.
The report found that the facility is unsuitable for the detention of children and that some youths are being held at the prison for more than a month.
Because Wacol was designed as a police watch-house, it was never meant to accommodate children. It was built for durability, with stainless steel and concrete surfaces.
This makes the centre an “overwhelmingly institutional environment”, the inspector said.
There is little exposure to grass, sunlight or fresh air, according to the report.
“We are not satisfied that the centre’s exercise courtyards adequately provide children with appropriate time outdoors or in the open air,” the report said.
“Although the courtyards allow natural light, they lack space for recreation and sport, contain no grassed or natural areas, provide limited airflow and offer no outward facing views.”
There is also little privacy in the prison for the children, and they are often only able to make a five minute phone call each day, the inspector found.
While the facility is meant to only hold children for as short a time as possible, one child was held at the centre for 49 days, and several others have been there for more than a month.
At the time of the inspections, there were 25 children incarcerated at the centre, and just under half of them were First Nations.
There are now more than 50 children being held at Wacol.
The report also raised serious concerns over strip searches being conducted at the prison, and a lack of adequate food.
Since the inspections, the Queensland government said that body scanners are now being used at Wacol, reducing the need for strip searches, and work is being done to increase access to phone calls.
It also said that efforts are being made to improve the standard of food, and for mental health clinicians to be recruited.
The QLD prison inspector received formal submissions from the Office of the Public Guardian and the Queensland Human Rights Commission and Queensland Family and Child Commission raising concerns about the police watch-house facility being repurposed as a children’s prison.
In a review last year, Queensland Police said that the basic built environments of watch-houses make them inappropriate for accommodating children.
