In the days after WA's first recorded death in juvenile detention, the government sacked its corrective services commissioner, Mike Reynolds. He now details the chaos behind the scenes during his tenure for the first time.
Last year the suicide of an Indigenous teenage detainee plunged Western Australia's already dysfunctional youth justice system into its worst ever crisis.Now former corrective services commissioner Mike Reynolds is speaking out for the first time since being sacked.
WARNING: This story discusses incidents of self-harm. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the name and image of a person who has died.Others have been locked in cells for up to 24 hours a day.Two of them have lost their lives to suicide.a wicked problem without a solution. But that's not what the man who once ran it in his role as the state's corrective services commissioner believes.
"It was bad when minister Johnston was in because he was only interested in cutting costs," he said."He did things like cutting the briefing notes down to a maximum of two pages. So you're writing to him to explain the complex issues with a child in custody can't be more than two pages. It led to what Mr Reynolds described as a "crazy" system, with a manager taking phone calls and manually recording the time each young person spent out of their cell."It was pure crisis mode. It was, 'what do we have to do to get these people off our back', not 'how do we change the system?'
Other changes Mr Reynolds said he advocated for but were never acted on included moving youth justice out of corrective services into a welfare-focused department."Corrections is a custody-based service. It meets the orders of the courts and provides a safe, humane containment of adult offenders," he said.
"I think I pushed back through the system as much as I could. Did I do it well enough? Probably not."Mr Reynolds said the government needed to genuinely want to change the system and be prepared to take bold action."Say to the people of Western Australia, 'we're genuinely making the change. This is going to be the flagship in youth detention and youth custody and supporting youth in the world'.
Wa Pols Wa Politics Wa News Mike Reynolds Corrective Services Youth Justice Justice Unit 18 Banksia Hill Perth Wa Youth Detention Cleveland Dodd Banksia Hill Detention Centre
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