Scotland has gotten all children out of prison - why can’t Australia?

After a number of deaths in custody, Scotland has moved to get all children out of its prisons. After a number of deaths in custody, Australia is moving the other way.

Scotland has successfully gotten all children out of its prisons.

After a series of tragic deaths in custody in its youth detention centres, Scotland has moved to prevent any children being placed in prisons, and for all people aged under 18 currently in prison to be placed in secure children’s care units instead.

These care centres house young people in groups of up to six, and are run by the care inspectorate and care staff.

There have also been a number of deaths in custody in Australian youth prisons in recent years.

Two children have died at the Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre in Western Australia. A 17-year-old boy died at the centre earlier this year, and a 16-year-old died in the prison in October last year.

While the deaths in custody in Scotland sparked action and a change in approach to youth justice, there are no signs in Australia that it will be going down this path.

Instead, the Northern Territory is planning to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 10, and Victoria has recently walked back its plan to raise the age to 14 in the coming years.

‘Prison is no place for children’

Scotland recently passed a new law banning children being sent to prisons. It was enacted in recent weeks, with the nine 16 and 17 year olds held in custody moved to secure children’s care centres instead.

These centres aim to provide intensive support and “safe boundaries” to help “vulnerable children re-engage and move forward positively in their communities”.

This was labelled a ‘landmark day” by the Scottish Prison Service.

Fiona Dyer, the director of the Children & Young People’s Centre for Justice in Glasgow, told ABC Perth that the positive changes have been in the works for decades, and are based on evidence.

“The evidence told us that bringing them into a justice system was more detrimental to them, and didn’t even stop them offending - it sometimes created more offending than doing nothing,” Dyer said.

“Prison is no place for children. We trusted the evidence.”

It was also part of Scotland’s efforts to embed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into its domestic law. Australia has also ratified this convention, which requires the imprisonment of a child to be a “last resort”, and to be done for the “shortest appropriate period of time”.

On an average night in the June quarter of 2023, there were 812 Australian children aged between 10 and 17 in prison, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. First Nations children are significantly disproportionately represented in this number, accounting for just under 60 percent of all children in custody.

Three-quarters of the children in prison in Australia are yet to be sentenced and are being held on remand.

The majority of children in custody in Australia are in Queensland, followed by New South Wales and then Victoria.

There were also 41 children aged under 13 years old in prison in the June 2023 quarter.

The new Northern Territory government recently announced plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility in the territory from 12 to 10.

In Victoria, the Labor government recently ditched its previous commitment to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 14 by 2027.

In Queensland, the Labor government has moved to remove a clause requiring “detention as a last resort” from its Charter of Youth Justice Principles, against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

There are more children being held in prison in Queensland than in any other Australian state or territory.