How Understanding Children’s Rights Can End Harmful Youth Detention Practices

As Australia marks Children’s Week 2025, one question matters more than ever. What would change if everyone truly understood what children’s rights mean? From solitary confinement to spit hoods, much of what continues in our youth justice facilities exists because too few people know those rights at all.

Every child in Australia has the right to safety, dignity and care. These are not symbolic statement but legal obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Mandela Rules, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. Australia has publicly endorsed all three. 

Yet in youth detention centres across the country, children are still being held alone in locked rooms for hours or even days at a time. These practices are in direct breach of the international standards that prohibit solitary confinement of minors, under any circumstance. 

If more Australians understood what these rights require, there would be little tolerance for practices that isolate or degrade children. The persistence of these torturous practices reflects both a policy gap and an awareness one.

We see this in how public discussions about youth justice tend to focus on punishment rather than prevention. When stories about youth offending make headlines, the conversation often turns to penalties and control. Questions about children’s wellbeing or rights rarely follow. This pattern reflects how deeply the language of punishment is embedded in public life.

Psychological research has shown that people feel a sense of innate moral satisfaction when they see punishment occur, even if it changes nothing about the outcome or make the community safer. As forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead notes, justice systems can act almost as “socially sanctioned” outlets for anger. When this instinct guides headlines and policy, it becomes very easy to believe that a suffering child is a ‘learning’ one. What feels like discipline in the moment, however, can cause serious and lasting harm.

Change can’t happen without awareness

Evidence has long shown that isolating children does not make communities safer. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that detention increases the likelihood of reoffending rather than reducing it. The Justice Reform Initiative reports that about 70 per cent of adults in NSW prisons have previously been incarcerated, showing how cycles of punishment repeat rather than resolve harm. By contrast, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has shown that diversion and early intervention programs cost far less than detention and deliver better long-term results.

Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that detention be used only as a last resort and for the shortest possible time. The Mandela Rules define solitary confinement as confinement for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact and classify its use on children as torture. These are clear standards that define whether a justice system protects children or violates them.

Fear and not evidence, continues to shape much of the public conversation. Although youth offending has declined nationally for more than two decades, selective reporting and political language often reinforce the perception of crisis. When fear dominates, it becomes easier to justify measures that remove rather than restore rights. Awareness of those rights provides the clarity needed to see harmful practices for what they are.

Former National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds has described many children in detention as those “failed by multiple systems.” Recognising their rights means recognising those failures earlier in classrooms, families and community settings. 

When we understand the rights we’re entitled to, we can act for prevention rather than response. They help teachers, youth workers, policy decision-makers and the community at large focus on what supports change rather than what enforces control.

Everyone should know about children’s rights

This Children’s Week is a reminder that awareness is action. Understanding children’s rights is not an abstract exercise; it is the first step in ending the practices in breach of them. 

When we all know those rights, things like solitary confinement begin to look like what they are; ineffective and inconsistent with the kind of nation that we are. 

Children’s rights are not an alternative to safety, they are the foundation of it. Knowing them ensures that no child is left alone without support or hope for change. 

It is up to us to be that hope.