National Justice Project Media Release
The pro bono human rights law firm, the National Justice Project has applauded the forensic and thorough findings of the NT Royal Commission into Youth Detention as a blueprint for positive and much needed change.
Principal Solicitor at the NJP, Adjunct Professor George Newhouse said today that the Royal Commission and Board of Inquiry did a great job in exposing systemic failures in the youth justice system.
“We are proud to have played a role in the Royal Commission by writing submissions on behalf of an Aboriginal family of 12 year old girl who was humiliated by police when they arrested her at her school and took her from her family. She later ended up at Don Dale youth detention centre. We also represented and appeared at the Royal Commission with Professor Larissa Behrendt from UTS who revealed shocking rates of Aboriginal child removals in the NT. The consequences of the NT’s abysmal treatment of Aboriginal youth are almost unbelievable in the prosperous Australia of 2017,” said Professor Newhouse.
“The Royal Commission heard that children have been subjected to almost Dickensian horrors in detention’” he continued. “Their treatment was, and remains, a terrible abuse of human rights of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. We should collectively hang our heads in shame.”
However Professor Newhouse did add that there is now a blueprint for change and a way for the country to move forward.
“The National Justice Project fully endorses and supports the recommendations of the Royal Commission. Not just to give kids in the NT a real chance at life, but also to underline that it’s a massive waste of time and taxpayer money to lock children up and then mistreat them in such a callous inhumane manner.”
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