CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The number of youth in detention across the NT has almost doubled over the past year, for some weird reason.
The Territory Government deny the possibility it could be a result of the NT Cop’s new ‘JAIL NOT BAIL’ directions, that have been developed after reading racist comments from half-baked vigilantes stirring shit on online community pages.
However, the NT families minister and Chief Minister Michael Gunner say it’s just a result of kids being badder than they usually are – and that no amount of youth centres and social policies could stop this influx of young, mostly Indigenous, children from entering the prison system as young as ten.
This boost in kids being locked up for crimes as petty as property damage and minor theft that are a direct result of visible socio-economic issues that cannot be solved with four concrete walls and three meals a day coincide with the Northern Territory government’s announcement that will spend millions of dollars making abandoned blocks in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre habitable as it prepares for a likely increase in youth detainees.
The rest of Australian might remembered Don Dale as the juvenile correctional facility that was supposed to be closed down two years ago after a Royal Commission into why little kids were being tear gassed in their locked cells and tortured in spit hoods.
The controversial changes to youth justice laws that make it more difficult for young offenders to get bail, and are part of $5 million flagged in March for prison infrastructure – experimental new laws that have been developed in partnership with rednecks with SS Utes in their display pictures on Facebook who spit racist rhetoric right across completely unmonitored community groups.
It does not seem as though there will be any emphasis on education or welfare, or any other lacklustre social policies that might make life a bit easier for these kids before they end up in a horrible cycle of walking the streets and causing trouble because their home lives are awful due to the Territory’s very real issues surrounding poverty and systemic racism.
These new laws have been a big hit on the popular vigilante page DARWIN COMMUNITY CRIME WATCH
/LOCK UP ALL THE BLACK KIDS NOW!!
This is a developing story that was first reported a couple hundred years ago.
MORE TOCOME.
