In one recent incident, an 11-year-old Aboriginal girl who was initially denied bail was detained overnight inside Palmerston’s overcrowded police watch house<\/a>, where the lights remain on 24 hours a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n 11yo held overnight in NT police watch house<\/a><\/p>\n The Northern Territory’s Aboriginal legal aid service says children as young as 11 are being held overnight at the Palmerston police watch house “with the lights on 24 hours a day”.<\/p>\n The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency’s (NAAJA) acting chief executive, Anthony Beven, has called on the federal government to suspend commonwealth funding for remote policing and other justice-related operations until the NT government changes its hardline approach to crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the Country Liberal Party came to power last year, the NT government has lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 back to 10 and introduced tougher bail laws for both adults and children.<\/p>\n Mr Beven said the measures were not working to reduce crime and were leading to large numbers of Aboriginal people being incarcerated.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthony Beven wants the federal government to suspend some of its funding to the NT until the territory government changes its approach to crime.\u00a0 (ABC News: Chris Fitzpatrick)<\/p>\n “One of the unique things we have here in the Northern Territory is that the commonwealth actually funds the Northern Territory police for remote policing and other options,” Mr Beven said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We are saying if those funds are commonwealth funds, the commonwealth should be putting conditions on the table to say we shouldn’t be locking young kids up.”<\/p>\n The NT Police Force was budgeted to receive about $50 million in commonwealth funding in 2024-25.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remote policing in the Northern Territory is funded by the Commonwealth. (ABC News: James Dunlevie)<\/p>\n Mr Beven also said NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro had so far refused to meet with NAAJA and other Aboriginal leaders to discuss strategies aimed at reducing crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the NT was a nation, its prison rate would trail only El Salvador<\/a><\/p>\n The NT’s prison population has reached a new high following its largest quarterly increase on record.<\/p>\n In a statement, Federal Indigenous Australians Minister Marndirri McCarthy said: “There is something very wrong with the Northern Territory justice system when an 11-year-old girl is held in an adult police watch house for two days and one night.”<\/p>\n “It is primarily Northern Territory bail laws that are driving this issue,” she said.<\/p>\n Ms McCarthy said the NT government had previously committed to reducing the incarceration rates of First Nations people under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.<\/p>\n Malarndirri McCarthy says the Country Liberal Party’s bail laws are the main driver of the NT’s high incarceration rate. (ABC News: Lee Robinson)<\/p>\n NT Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby slammed Mr Beven’s comments as “utterly absurd”.<\/p>\n “Threatening to cut essential funding to remote policing is counterproductive, dangerous, and undermines community confidence,” Ms Boothby said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n “There is no alternative: those who break the law will be arrested.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Corrections will continue to expand capacity to ensure those who are remanded or sentenced have a bed, because that’s what the community expects.”<\/p>\n Marie-Clare Boothby says the adult prison in Berrimah will be expanded to accommodate an extra 238 inmates. (ABC News: Peter Garnish)<\/p>\n Ms Boothby said the adult prison in Berrimah, on Darwin’s outskirts, would be expanded to accommodate an extra 238 prison beds by mid-August.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ms Finocchiaro has been contacted for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n NT Children’s Commissioner Shahleena Musk said it was “deeply concerning” children as young as 11 were ending up in police custody, saying it was a result of the NT’s move to lower the age of criminal responsibility.<\/p>\n “We’ve seen a return of children as young as 10 and 11 being arrested by police, proceeded again through the courts, [and] some are ending up in detention on remand,” she said.<\/p>\n “This is against all the evidence of what we know, that children aged 10, 11 and 12 really lack the emotional, mental and intellectual maturity for criminal responsibility.”<\/p>\n Shahleena Musk says many children being detained in the NT have complex but unmet needs and are “victims in their own right”.\u00a0 (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n She said she was “distressed” at the state of youth justice in the NT, where children \u2014 especially Indigenous children \u2014 were being detained at high rates.<\/p>\n “Many of them are victims in their own right, children who have been failed by other systems. And it’s just astounding that this has become the response,” she said.International attention on Australian incarceration<\/p>\n The situation in the Northern Territory comes amid growing international concern about youth justice in Australia.<\/p>\n In a letter to the federal government in May, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards, and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Albert K Barume, singled out the NT’s record on human rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Several states and the Northern Territory are announcing new ‘tougher’ criminal legislation, which seem to give little regard to international human rights standards,” they wrote. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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