A youth advocacy body is preparing to take legal action against the Queensland government over allegations of mistreatment of young people in the state's watch houses. The youth advocacy centre has accused the government of failing to protect children from abuse including alleged sexual assault.
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00:00 Sounding the alarm on the conditions facing children in adult watch houses.
00:07 We're now at risk of crossing the threshold into cruel and degrading treatment.
00:14 Youth justice advocates say juveniles are being failed by the state,
00:19 detailing allegations of abuse and mistreatment.
00:23 The most concerning cases of young people in the watch house
00:26 would be the sexual abuse of an Aboriginal boy by his inmate earlier this year.
00:32 The Youth Advocacy Centre has repeatedly outlined its concerns in letters to the government,
00:38 the latest highlighting 56 First Nations children were held in watch houses last week,
00:44 representing 70% of young people detained.
00:48 And two 14-year-old boys have been held in watch houses for 28 and 30 days.
00:54 Nothing meaningful actually happens. We haven't had any action taken.
00:59 I think we really have to ask ourselves, what are we doing in Queensland
01:03 where we now have children locked up at twice the rate of other jurisdictions?
01:09 Catherine Hayes says the service is looking to launch a negligence case
01:14 in the Supreme Court against the state government.
01:17 We believe that there is a good case for arguing that the government has breached its duty to these kids.
01:23 And the reason why we want to do this is because the community is no safer by treating the kids in this way.
01:29 The Premier says police do their best to look after young people
01:33 while they're awaiting transfer to a detention centre.
01:37 It's one of the reasons why we're building a detention centre in Cairns,
01:41 to deal with and address that demand.
01:44 We provide support around those juveniles, making sure that they're as safe as possible,
01:49 and our aim is to have them removed from our watch houses as soon as possible.
01:52 Following a law and order blitz across the state last week,
01:56 Premier Stephen Miles will outline a new community safety plan when Parliament resumes tomorrow.
02:03 It's likely to include further law changes to crack down on young offenders.
02:09 [BLANK_AUDIO]