Horrific and confronting footage of Dylan Voller being abused at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, dating back to when he was just 13-years-old, was a catalyst for a royal commission into the sector.
As a result, the 19-year-old was uniquely experienced to ask last night’s Q&A panel why the legal system is so quick to funnel young offenders into cells rather than focussing on rehabilitation.
“There is a great rehab centre here in Alice Springs and at Loves Creek Station called BushMob,” Voller said.
“Why can’t we have more youth detainees from the juvenile centre to go there where they can work with horses, and learn to build, instead of sitting in a cell with no rehabilitation?”
The panel was in agreement that the punitive system isn’t the answer for young offenders.
Charles Darwin University researcher Dr Josie Douglas said young people in detention should be given access to medical and psychological services as well as social and cultural support, but blamed the history of “tough love” for its absence.
NT Labor MP Warren Snowden agreed, saying: “The punitive models just don’t work. We know that. Locking kids up is not the answer.”
He went on to praise BushMob, a rehabilitation program which offers participants under 25 with “responsible and realistic mentors for young people” and a variety of therapies.
“It’s something which, as a model, has proven to be very, very effective.”
William Tilmouth, co-founder of Children’s Ground which offers Aboriginal youth education and programs, said politicians were too late to intervene – only providing funding after the damage was already done.
“Locking kids up is not the answer,” he said. “There’s nothing helping to work on the prevention of what’s happening downstream.” But, he said, “prisons make big money”.
Queensland Independent MP Bob Katter, who also said on the program that he identified “as a blackfella on occasion” (what?), announced his party would present a new policy on “this stupidity” shortly.
“Putting a kid in a steel cage like an animal, for having gone on a joy-ride with his big brother because he wasn’t game not to, seems to me to be eminently unfair and unjust,” he said.
Voller was released from a Darwin prison earlier this year to reside in BushMob for four months.
Speaking to NITV, he described how he was learning from his past mistakes.
Voller with fellow BushMob participant Dixon.
“I’m disgusted in my behaviour and really not proud of the things I did and said when I was younger,” he said.
“I was a young kid, I’d had a fair bit of trauma, and I didn’t know how to cope with it and I acted out and that. All I can do is apologise to everyone that I did offend and move forward.
“Sometimes people don’t want anything to do with me because of my history.
“I’m not a bad person, I’ve made a lot of bad mistakes and it took me a long time to learn from them, but I have learnt from them now and I’m on the right path.”
The royal commission will hand down its findings on the NT youth detention sector on September 30.
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