AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT
SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 664#
DONVALE YOUTH DETENTION CENTRE:
A LID PULLED OFF ONLY ONE STINKING GARBAGE TIN.
DOGS Googled Don Dale Youth Detention Centre
Don Dale Youth Detention Centre
1.6 28 Google reviews
Prison in the Berrimah, Northern Territory, Australia
The Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, an Australian maximum security prison for juvenile males and females, is located in Berrimah, Northern Territory, Australia. Wikipedia
Address: 90 Tivendale Rd, Berrimah NT 0828
Phone: (08) 8922 0111
Capacity: 38
Opened: November 1991
Reviews
"The most messed up juvenile detention center in Australia."
"Don Dale Concentration Camp."
"This organisation is a disgrace."
Closed.
Anyone who watched the Four Corners Program on the NT Donvale Youth Detention Centre could only wonder whether Australia has progressed since the days of Port Arthur.
Teachers, lawyers and social workers who has had any dealings with children in privately run detention centres throughout Australia have known about barbaric treatment in these punitive institutions. There have been many whistleblowers, especially among teachers allowed behind closed walls. Globalisation and the privatisation of prisons has not improved the situation. Australian children are numbers, subject to worse treatment than animals by untrained guards and corporations in pursuit of profit.
At the same time as a few high profile politicians suffering from momentary knee jerks, are tutt-tutting and setting up a Royal Commission, educational resources for disadvantaged children in the public system, the TAFE Colleges and the prisons themselves are under threat!
The NSW Government is looking at cutting more than 70 teachers employed within the state's prison system, and outsourcing training to specialist organisations.The number of teachers and educational officers will be reduced from 158 to 87.
According to the NSW Government “These changes are part of the Better Prisons reform, aimed at lifting standards, strengthening accountability, and helping to meet a commitment to reduce adult reoffending by five per cent by 2019.”
The NSW Teachers Federation has labelled the plan "appalling", and said the teachers provided a critical opportunity for prisoners to learn to read and write, helping them break the cycle of poverty and crime.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-11/teachers-in-nsw-prisons-to-go-under-shakeup/7404596
Greens MP David Shoebridge said the teachers were highly skilled and their sacking would result in a loss of experience in providing skills to prisoners. He said:
"Forty per cent reduction in overall head count in corrective services education, and when we've got record prisoner numbers.
"It looks very much like a prisons minister who is desperately keen for budget cuts, because his failed law and order auction has driven the prison population to such heights that they are looking for savings anywhere."
DOGS would like to acknowledge the courage of one of the main victims who put his safety on the line with the assistance of his lawyers. This was a boy who is still in the system, called Dylan Voller. He is a lad from Alice Springs who had the guts to stand up to his tormenters and those who watched the Four Corners program that exposed attempts to torture and break him.
His is not an unusual story. He had gone on a bender with ice and alcohol and proved himself a danger to the community under the influence of these drugs. So, although a child, he was incarcerated and subjected to solitary confinement, along with extraordinary restraints to break, not his habit, but his spirit. For Dylan had spirit.
Australians are left wondering whether we have regressed to the days of Point Puer in Tasmania, and the sad remnants of child convicts sent half way around the world.
When the shouting dies, and a few political heads have gone home to dinner in disgrace, Dylan will still be in detention, in grave danger of payback.
The good news is that a teacher or teachers have taught him to read and write. Thanks to what education this lad was given, we have a bit more evidence of his tragic existence than graffiti on the walls of a nineteenth century prison cell.
He wrote a letter thanking the Australian people as follows:
26.7.16
I would just like to thank the whole Australian community for the support you have showed for us a boys as well as our families. I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to the community for my wrongs and I can’t wait to get out and make up for them.
I would like to thank ABC , Four Corners and my lawyers, O’Brien SOllictoers. Peter O’Brien, Deo Indevar as well as N.A.A.J.A. Mathew Derig, Jarryd Sharpe, John Rawnsley Australian Human Rights Lawyer Ruth Barson and C.A.A.I.A.S. Aintonette Carroll for all the help in getting the truth out there to the public and my family for all the support through the hard times.
And thank you to my mates Ethan Australia, Jake Roper, Josiah Binsarus, Leroy O’Shey, Kieran Webster
https://twitter.com/OBrienSolicitor/status/757849864428396548/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
also see:
We owe Dylan and other children like him. We owe all of our Australian children.
We owe them a safe home and environment for learning. We owe them a good basic education and skills for employment. We owe them employment and a future. If we do not put our resources into educational provision, we will condemn children like Dylan to torture at the hands of private prison corporations.
This is why DOGS take on the religious institutions that divide our children and leech the financial resources out of our public system leaving disadvantaged children like Dylan in limbo, a prey for drug dealers, and prison warders.
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