A new high-security youth justice centre will be built by the state government in Werribee South following a string of violent uprisings, escapes and several damning reviews of existing facilities at Malmsbury and Parkville.
The Andrews government is expected to announce the 250-bed youth detention centre within weeks in a desperate bid to staunch the crisis that has plagued Victoria’s youth justice system and threatens the government’s re-election prospects.
According to a senior government source, the project will cost about $250million and is understood to have been commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services more than six months ago, after repeated warnings about overcrowding at Malmsbury and Parkville.
The youth justice centre will include a high-security unit for the state’s worst youth offenders. It will be built on a greenfield site in Werribee South, off the Princes Freeway, but the location is expected to cause ructions with residents in the growth corridor south-west of Melbourne.
Some home owners in the neighbouring suburbs of Point Cook, Hoppers Crossing and Truganina are expected to have deep reservations about living in proximity of a juvenile detention centre, following a violent crime spree last week involving 15 escapees from Malmsbury.
The new facility will almost double the state’s capacity to accommodate youth offenders, and casts doubt over the future of the Parkville Youth Justice Centre, which was extensively damaged during a riot last November.
Last week Ms Mikakos said a new “fit-for-purpose” juvenile justice centre would be built with more beds and special features to handle inmates with complex behaviour problems.
“Victoria is going to get a fit-for-purpose, high-security youth justice system and there will be more beds in that system than we have at the moment,” she said at the time.
But on Tuesday night her spokesman declined to give details, saying only that the government has made no secret about its plan to build a new facility to keep young offenders secure and the community safe.
Sections of the Parkville facility were closed after the November uprising, which prompted the government to transfer the alleged instigators to the adult Barwon Prison on November 21.
At the time, Premier Daniel Andrews made “no apology” for the contentious decision.
“The behaviour that we have seen at Parkville is completely unacceptable. I am sick … and the Victorian community is sick of it. Those inmates will be going to adult prison and I make absolutely no apology,” he said.
But on December 21, the Victorian Supreme Court ruled that sending youths to an adult prison was illegal, which was upheld by the Court of Appeal a week later
On December 28, the state government moved to reclassify Barwon’s Grevillea Unit as a youth justice facility and remand centre, which circumvented the Supreme Court decision but attracted sharp criticism from human rights advocates.
The crisis in Victoria’s youth justice system has been blamed on inaction by successive governments, which have ignored warnings of “Dickenson conditions” and chronic understaffing.
Last week, Fairfax Media revealed an explosive report by deputy ombudsman John Taylor in 2010 that documented severe overcrowding and brutal assaults of young “clients” by fellow inmates and staff at Parkville.
“I saw Parkville as being unfit for purpose and unable to meet the modern requirements to detain often large men,” Mr Taylor said.
The ombudsmen’s scathing 2010 assessment that squalid Parkville was not fit for purpose were backed up by subsequent and confidential post-riots reviews by former chief commissioner Neil Comrie and former NSW Juvenile Justice director Peter Muir.
Muir’s damning May 2016 report found Parkville was unsafe and warned that lock-downs and staff dysfunction were “increasing tension and contributing to the level of risk”.
The Malmsbury Youth Justice Facility has also been subject of several major riots, while the mass break-out last week exposed major security flaws and resulted in a “mini crime wave” across Melbourne before the youths were rounded up.
A recent WorkSafe report on Malmsbury found staff were at risk of death or serious injury in attacks that were occurring almost daily.
In one month alone, WorkSafe recorded almost 40 incidents of violence against staff, including threats of rape made against female youth justice workers.
Families and Children Minister Jenny Mikakos has been approached for comment.
Cameron Houston, Chris Vedelago, Josh Gordon – The Age
