Minister defends creation of youth unit in adult prison
A warning: This story contains content some viewers may find distressing. It discusses incidents of self-harm and includes the name of an indigenous person who has died. The minister who approved the creation of a controversial youth detention unit within an adult prison in Perth has defended the decision after a coronial inquest was told it was based on "a series of grievous lies". The inquest is probing the death of an indigenous teenager who fatally self-harmed in his cell in the infamous unit 18 facility.
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00:00Perhaps one of the most prominent and damning testimonies to have come out of the inquest
00:06so far was from the former Department of Justice Director General Adam Thomason, who agreed
00:13in hindsight that some information provided in a ministerial briefing to Mr Johnson to
00:19approve the creation of Unit 18 was not true. In fact, he agreed under intense questioning
00:25that some information, such as the amount of time young people would spend outside of
00:30their cells, was blatant lies. Today, Mr Johnson had broken his silence for the very first
00:37time since that damning evidence came out several weeks ago, but he said he didn't regret
00:41gazetting Unit 18 and he would not speculate on the hypothetical question of whether he
00:46would have still done so, knowing the damning evidence that has come out of the inquest,
00:51such as the fact that it had been opened without a safe nursing model or dedicated
00:57observation cells for mentally vulnerable detainees that needed to be observed and monitored
01:0224-7. Here's a little more of what he had to say.
01:05Everybody that I spoke to was trying to provide a safe workplace for the staff, and that is
01:13an essential element of the discussion.
01:16Over the last few days, we've been hearing from the Corrections Deputy Commissioner,
01:20Christine Jimby, who was responsible for youth justice when Unit 18 had been created
01:25in 2022 and when Cleveland fatally self-harmed in his cell last year. Now, she has staunchly
01:33defended the actions of the Department of Justice in the lead-up and during the creation
01:39of Unit 18, but she's accepted that it could have been more transparent and more fulsome
01:45in the information that it provided both to the public and the minister.