Colin Barnett: Unit 18 ‘borders on torture’, calls for political leaders to show courage and close facility

WA’s hardline juvenile justice facility at Casuarina Prison borders on “torture”, former Premier Colin Barnett believes, calling for the State’s political leaders to show courage and close the beleaguered Unit 18. In a scathing assessment of all sides of politics, Mr Barnett, who served as Liberal Premier for more than eight years, described his frustration at the silence of Labor backbenchers on the issues in youth detention, in the wake of two suicides in less than a year. The comments come after the deaths of Cleveland Dodd last October at Unit 18, which lead to a coronial inquest, and the suicide of a 17-year-old at Banksia Hill last month. “Those young people, despite the offending they’ve done, are in small cells and experiencing 20 hours solitary confinement on a continuing basis,” Mr Barnett told The West. “To me, that is clearly abusive of anyone, but particularly of underage people, children, if you like, legally and I think it’s actually bordering on torture.” Mr Barnett, who has largely steered clear of criticising the Government in his retirement, said the “shameful” nature of the facility and the suicides had driven him to speak out. The incidents, he said, would leave WA with worse reputational damage on the world stage than the destruction at Juukan Gorge. “This is a sort of abuse of people that you see in undeveloped, backward nations and totalitarian states and so on,” Mr Barnett said. “This should not be happening in Australia, and certainly not in Western Australia. “The fact that there had not been a suicide of any youth in the justice system prior to this, and there have been two in a year, is a great shame to Western Australia.” The former Premier expressed his amazement at how silent the significant Labor backbench had been on the issues within youth justice, asking “where are they”. “What I would like to see, I would like to see some of our members of Parliament from all parties that have spoken about justice issues, and, you know, suicide and so on at length,” he said. “So many left-of-centre politicians, obviously on the Labor side, and some Liberals speak out on those sorts of issues, but I haven’t heard anything. “Surely, there are some people in the West Australian Parliament, prepared to speak out — that’s the only reason I am because I’m just frustrated in hearing nothing about it.” Mr Barnett said he hoped his leader — Libby Mettam — would echo is calls to shutter the facility. On Monday, Ms Mettam said a Liberal Government would do so as a priority. Last week, Premier Roger Cook defended the State’s approach to juvenile justice, saying the Government’s priority was to keep the community safe. “If people do a crime, they have to pay for that crime. There are consequences for their actions. “But we need to make sure that we’re intervening in people’s lives before they find themselves in a situation where they’re making poor decisions and starting to enter into criminal behaviour. “We are reforming our juvenile detention and our overall Corrective Services systems, and reform needs to continue to take place. “That work will never stop. We also need to swim upstream, make sure that we’re doing everything we can to ensure that young people and other people in the community don’t offend in the first place and have better supports to ensure that that happens.”