‘Fever pitch’: Youth prison workers walk off job amid assaults, threats
By Zach Hope
Detainees at Brisbane’s youth prisons allegedly attacked staff with a makeshift knife and punched another in the face in separate incidents this week, prompting workers to walk off the job on Thursday amid claims of chronic staff shortages and escalating violence.
Calling for better safety conditions and government incentives to entice more staff, Australian Workers’ Union spokesman Joseph Kaiser said members were routinely attacked or threatened, and the detainees were missing out on schooling and rehabilitation.
AWU spokesman Joseph Kaiser and protesting staff outside Brisbane’s youth prisons on Thursday.Credit: Brisbane Times
Close to 100 workers protested outside the Brisbane and West Moreton Youth Detention Centres – adjacent to each other in the suburb of Wacol – after a Brisbane staff member was allegedly punched in the face on Thursday morning.
The previous afternoon at West Moreton, a detainee allegedly attacked three workers with a 25-centimetre shiv, injuring one. Kaiser said a subsequent search of the teen’s room uncovered eight knives.
“Things are basically at fever pitch out here at the moment – it’s really, really bad,” he said.
“... I’m talking about five assaults per week last year [in the two Brisbane centres and Townsville’s Cleveland Youth Detention Centre combined].
“I’m talking about punching, kicking, spitting, broken bones, acquired brain injury, life-changing injuries.”
Thursday’s action from the workers, which included those from Cleveland in Townsville, ended on Monday afternoon after an agreement was struck in the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC).
It comes weeks before formal negotiations are set to begin on a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.
In January, Queensland ranked the worst state for youth detention capacity pressure, with an average nightly detention centre population of 275 across the 2021-22 financial year. The state has only 288 permanently funded beds.
The Queensland Labor government, having long denounced excessively punitive forms of youth justice, was this year seeking to put more young offenders in detention and keep them there longer via legislation changes widely condemned by experts.
Illustrating the government’s change of tune, new Youth Justice Minister Di Farmer this month trumpeted the fact Queensland had more youths in detention centres than any other jurisdiction except the Northern Territory.
But workers say the state’s main detention centres have been at capacity “for years” and the overflow is being housed in police watchhouses.
Kaiser claimed there were only six days last year that Brisbane Youth Detention Centre had a full complement of staff, while Cleveland, considered by workers to be the most troubled, was regularly at 80 per cent lockdown.
“That means kids in their rooms not receiving meaningful rehabilitation, not receiving meaningful schooling, not playing sport, not socialising, not learning how to be normal human beings,” he said.
Staff shortages and safety concerns in Townsville meant children were not being appropriately rotated, according to staff, leading to excessive time spent in solitary confinement.
Guardian Australia reported this month an Aboriginal teenager with an intellectual disability had spent 24 hours in confinement on 515 of the 744 days he spent in custody.
At the Brisbane centres, workers complained that members of the response team, which was generally positioned between the two prisons so it could deploy rapidly to either one in case of an incident, were often the first called inside to fill staffing shortages.
In one case at West Moreton last year, the absence of a response team allowed for a situation in which a worker was allegedly pinned and punched by a detainee for “four or five minutes” until resources could be mustered to help, according to staff.
Kaiser said the government had “not radically” increased funding to the centres since it implemented the harsher youth justice laws – “and we need radical action”.
“It’s simply an attraction and retention issue,” he said.
“In today’s labor market, it’s hard enough to find staff for a lot of roles, especially incredibly challenging ones like in this workplace. Right now the government is throwing the kitchen sink at multiple other cohorts of the public service to try to attract and retain the staff they need.
“That is occurring because the government has correctly identified that there is a real issue to the public and the public safety if there isn’t proper staffing in those areas. It’s the exact same thing here.”
By the afternoon, staff had agreed to return to work, having won a commitment from the government in the QIRC to ensure the centres were fully staffed from July 10 to July 24, according to Kaiser, who spoke again after the hearing.
He said the union would continue lobbying the government to make full staffing a permanent feature. “It’s a good outcome,” he said.
Police directed this masthead’s questions about the latest alleged violent incidents to the government. Farmer did not respond. Instead, a departmental spokesman said youth prisons were “complex and difficult places to work”.
“The work and dedication our staff show to ensure safety of the community, detainees and other staff members in the centres cannot be understated,” he said.
“We have made and will continue to make significant investments in detention centres to ensure safety.
“Following that hearing the AWU agreed to return to work immediately and we agreed to continue to work in partnership with the union to resolve issues raised.”