20
Police ‘cannot meet’ expectations for children in custody amid Cairns watch house overcrowding
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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I mean, sure. We dont want 'em to die. But I'm tipping the people of Cairns who've suffered home invasions or cars stolen or had knives pulled on them probs don't care if they are not getting the 5 star treatment. You get fed, you can go to the bathroom and you get limited exercise: That should be absolutely it. Dont like it? Maybe dont break the fucking law over and over again.
Human rights apply to everyone regardless of whether they engage in crime.
Of course they do! Do you not see my comment saying fed bathroom and exercise? No one is disagreeing with that. But the situation isnt getting any better, so what do we do here? you either need to have government overstep into peoples lives to ensure these kids are raised properly (Which of course, isn't palatable) or you make consequences actually stick (which no one seems to want either). So what, we stay the course? Accept its cool for teenagers to break into peoples homes at 3am, steal a car and go joy riding? Someone's gonna get killed. Hell, someone just was in victoria!
maybe we look at addressing the systemic problems we face due to a legacy of slavery and colonialism? We've literally only tried the punitive approach; it's maybe time for Australia to get its fucking act together
Incarcerating children increases rates of offending.
So whats your solution? I'm not up in cairns, but by all reports these are repeat offenders. This keeps happening, so what do we do here cause people are suffering and its not getting better.
Well we could start by not repeating the same behaviours that have clearly not been working for the last 100 years?
Watch houses are only really considered acceptable for adults and a maximum of 24 hours.
A night in a cell can help an adult - it's a real wakeup call and a forced opportunity to sit and think about what you just did.
Kids often haven't learned how to do that yet (especially if they haven't had a good upbringing) and by adding one more traumatic experience to an already long list in their short life is just making things worse for everyone, including the victims of the crime. Compounding that - being kids they need supervision and there's often nowhere else available - you can release an adult and let them go out in the world on their own with a bit of basic help (this is where you can find food, shelter, work, etc). But a child can't be released, they have to do a hand off to a trusted adult. And when one can't be found the cops have no choice but to keep them in locked up - sometimes for over a month. Even for an adult a month in a watch house would be extremely damaging, let alone a child (especially one who has other mental health issues which is very often the case with anyone who behaves badly in society).
Keep in mind every single one of these kids is legally innocent (since they haven't been to court yet). The kids need adults to show and teach them how to live a successful and happy life and our society is failing to provide that. The kids aren't the ones to blame for that.