Placing Children in Adult Prisons Is Not Protection
“Police watch houses are not appropriate for children. The police officers are not trained to care for children, and there is no education or rehabilitation provided. There is no access to fresh air or exercise, and many cells have no window for natural light. Children as young as 10 years of age are being detained for many weeks in these shocking conditions.”
- Anne Hollonds, former National Children’s Commissioner
The placement of juvenile detainees in police watch houses and adult prisons is a national problem, and one that is often not recognised for what it is: solitary confinement. The solitary confinement of children in detention is typically seen as occurring within the walls of youth detention centres, with awareness sorely lacking around the harm from isolation that occurs outside these centres, but still very much within the incarceration system. The use of police watch houses and adult prisons to hold youth detainees is a significant area in which children experience the severe effects of solitary confinement and one that receives little oversight or regulation.
Police watch houses refer to short-term holding cells attached to police stations designed to hold adults temporarily. These cells often have no running water, no natural light or furniture. There are no facilities to accommodate education programs or therapeutic care for youth detainees, and they are staffed by police trained in law enforcement, not in child welfare or trauma-informed care. These cells are unequivocally unsuitable to house children, and yet children are being placed in them for days and sometimes weeks. Adult prisons are just as harmful; children are being held alongside adult offenders in custodial facilities which are not designed to provide the necessary care for children in detention.
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has explicitly recognised watch houses as a distinctly problematic area in youth justice concerns and has noted considerable increases in both the number of young people being held in watch houses, as well the length of time spent in these watch houses. The AHRC noted that this issue is particularly prominent in Queensland, citing a 2024 review by the Queensland Police Service which found that approximately 10% (7432) of all watch house admissions were children, who also spent significantly longer time in these cells than adult prisoners. However, this practice continues across Australia.
What does the law say?
The feature that these police watch houses and adult prisons have in common is that they are not youth-specific, meaning that children and adults are being held in the same space. International law states explicitly under Article 37(c) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that children in detention must be separated from adults unless it is within their best interests not to do so. However, Australia continues to hold a reservation to this article, on the basis that geography and demography factors make it difficult to always detain children in youth facilities while facilitating contact with their families. This position has faced considerable criticism, notably due to the fact that the CRC article already takes these concerns into account; and further, because children have been detained alongside adults in circumstances where geographical and family contact concerns are not in issue.
However, domestic law within Australia does stipulate that children must be segregated from adults while detained. This becomes an issue when children are not placed in youth detention facilities, but rather in facilities designed to hold adult detainees. The result is that children are being placed in what effectively amounts to solitary confinement in order to keep them separate from adult offenders as required by law. This is unacceptable. While the rationale behind keeping children away from potentially dangerous adult offenders is reasonable and consistent with protecting the child, the reality is that children are still being exposed to harm in the form of solitary confinement.
Children are not being protected
In many cases of children being placed in these watch houses or adult prisons, the primary aim of protection is very often unsuccessful. There are countless reports of children still being exposed to adult offenders while in these environments. In smaller watch houses it’s almost impossible to effectively keep the children and adult separated. Even where children have been physically separated from adults, they are often still exposed; in particular, the sounds of adult offenders – including screaming – are still incredibly traumatising to children in an already scary environment, and there is substantial potential for exposure to verbal abuse and intimidation from adult offenders.. It is clear that even the prescribed purpose of isolating children in adult detention facilities is failing with the current approach.
To truly ensure that children are not exposed to adult offenders, they simply cannot be held in the same facilities. Keeping youth offenders isolated while surrounded by adult offenders is not effective in reducing the harm experienced by children in detention – it simply reinforces it. The placement of children in isolation in the interests of ‘protecting’ them from harm is paradoxical and ‘deeply misguided’. The effects of solitary confinement and isolation on the physical, emotional and mental health of children are indisputable, as are the impacts on the likelihood of rehabilitation. Regulations and protections must be implemented to ensure that children are not being housed in police watch houses and adult prisons. Children must be protected from the effects of solitary confinement, regardless of the intended purpose of isolation.