Status Operational Opened September 1998 | Capacity 10 | |
Location Alice Springs, Northern Territory Security class Maximum, for juvenile males and females Managed by Northern Territory Correctional Services | ||
The Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre formerly known as Alice Springs Juvenile Holding Centre, an Australian medium to maximum security prison for juvenile males and females, is located in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia.
Contents
Facilities
The centre was designed for use as a short-term holding and remand centre for up to four days and can hold up to ten juveniles of either sex. Longer remand periods or sentences are moved to Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in Darwin.
Despite this being against the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, there is no plan to establish a longer term juvenile detention centre in Alice Springs. In February 2011, the Northern Territory Government announced plans to open a Juvenile Detention Facility in Alice Springs with place for 24 detainees.
Four Corners program
Graphic footage of repeated abuse of children at Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre and in Alice Springs was featured in ABC's Four Corners episode "Australia's Shame", which aired on 25 July 2016. The program also showed a 17-year-old boy shackled and hooded in a chair in Alice Springs. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was "shocked" at the "appalling treatment" of the detainees, which violates the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, to which Australia is party.
Following national outrage, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a Royal Commission into Juvenile Detention in the Northern Territory. John Elferink was sacked as Corrections Minister the morning after the program aired. The corrections and justice portfolios were taken on by Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles. Use of restraint chairs and spithoods were then suspended.