Unit 18: Why We Keep Doing What Doesn’t Work

We know what is happening to children in detention. The question is why is it still allowed to continue?

In Part 1 of this investigation, we explored what solitary confinement looks like when children are placed in adult facilities like police watch houses and prisons. These environments subject children to the well-documented physical, psychological and developmental harms of isolation, often out of public view.

This article turns to the why. It builds on that foundation by examining one of the most confronting examples in Australia, the Unit 18 facility in Western Australia, and what it reveals about how and why these practices persist.

What is Unit 18?

Unit 18 is the name of a repurposed wing of Casuarina Prison, a maximum-security adult men’s prison located in Perth. The wing was opened in July 2022 in response to riots at the Banksia Hill detention centre, Western Australia’s primary youth facility, and was explicitly designed to hold the most ‘disruptive’ juvenile detainees from Banksia Hill.

While Unit 18 was intended to be a temporary measure, it remains open, likely for at least the next three years, while a new WA youth detention facility is being built. This is despite the significant controversy surrounding Unit 18, which is particularly known for its appalling and inhumane conditions, including the use of solitary confinement on the juvenile detainees.

Promises of therapeutic programs, cultural support, health services, education and recreation were made but ultimately failed to be implemented – in some cases, young offenders were held in cells without running water. Reports regarding the conditions of Unit 18 depict a deeply harmful and traumatising environment: the WA Aboriginal Legal Service gave evidence to the Disability Royal Commission about prolonged lockdowns, detainees being assaulted, as well as restriction on visits and access to medical assistance and educational programs.

The lack of air conditioning in the Unit 18 cells also mean that extreme heat conditions in Perth – sometimes upwards of 40 degrees – are especially severe for juvenile detainees, who aren’t even guaranteed a fan to stay cool while being held in their cells for over 20 hours a day.

The harmful effects of the Unit 18 facility are clear, particularly on the mental wellbeing of the detainees; from its opening up until September 2023, there were 20 attempted suicides and over 350 incidents of self-harm inside the Unit 18 facility.

Solitary Confinement in Unit 18

Due to the facility being part of an adult maximum-security prison, the juvenile detainees have to, by law, be separated from adult inmates. In effect, however, is that this separation takes the form of solitary confinement. Young offenders are being kept alone in their cells for up to 24 hours a day; reports from 2023 showed that on average, children held in Unit 18 spent only 3.3 hours a day out of their cell, but an inspection revealed the true amount of time out of cells to be far less.

The tragic death of Cleveland Dodds, an Indigenous teenager who was found unresponsive in his Unit 18 cell following a self-harm incident, was Western Australia’s first recorded juvenile death in custody, a statistic that should never have eventuated. The coronial inquest found that in his final 93 days at Unit 18, Cleveland had spent 85% of this time in solitary confinement.

Adam Tomison, the former WA Department of Justice Director General, said from the witness stand that Cleveland’s treatment was ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’, and acknowledged that the other 13 children held in Unit 18 during that period had been subjected to the same kind of treatment, labelling it as ‘institutional abuse’.

Unit 18 forces a difficult but necessary answer to the question we’ve asked.

It remains open, despite the knowledge we now have on the harm, because the system has accepted it. In the absence of adequate facilities and genuine investment in therapeutic alternatives, extreme isolation has become the default response to complexity and behavioural challenges.

When governments accept environments that are known to cause profound harm to children and justify these conditions as temporary despite years of use, they are making a choice about what is tolerable.

Ease of administration can never be prioritised over the safety of our children.