In the past month, the name Dylan Voller has become synonymous with the treatment meted out to some youth offenders in Australia's Northern Territory.
An investigation by ABC TV revealed a video of Voller hooded and strapped to a chair in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin until he was almost catatonic.
Reminiscent of images from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, the picture and others like it have triggered a Royal Commission (Australia’s highest level of public investigation) into the area’s youth detention practices.
Dublin woman Antoinette Carroll, a youth justice advocate in Alice Springs, knows Voller better than most. Voller, who is Aboriginal, first came to her attention in 2009, when he was 11 years old. "People were very confronted by him, it's like this tiny little person that had this really strong language," she says. Carroll's work involves the provision of court support and case work services to young people charged with a criminal offence.
Voller is now 19 and has spent all his time, bar about eight months, since then in youth detention or the adult prison where he is now held.
"The sentence he received for his crimes is very harsh, given the nature of his crimes for such a young person. They were the lower end of the scale of offending," Carroll tells The Irish Times.
Early intervention
“The majority of his offences have occurred whilst he has been incarcerated.” Carroll says governments need to weigh up the cost of detention versus the cost of funding early intervention programmes.
“The cost of incarcerating a young person is about AUS$250,000 (€170,000) a year. Compare that to the cost of therapeutic support that could have been provided in early childhood before he entered the criminal justice system. Now, we have a 19-year-old young man who still potentially doesn’t have the skills to control impulses.”
She notified the authorities about Voller’s treatment several times. “I made numerous complaints to the Department of Family and Children. This led to a full investigation into his time in care and his time in detention. It was completed in 2014 but has still not been cited,” Carroll says.
She was not, however, aware that Voller and others were being tied to a chair. “God, no. What people need to understand is that young people who’ve been largely humiliated in that fashion are not particularly talking about it; they are so traumatised by it. Despite having regular contact with Dylan, I was not aware of that chair.”
The Northern Territory is holding an election next week, which the conservative Country Liberal Party (CLP), which has lurched from crisis to crisis, is expected to lose heavily.
Carroll is using the election to promote a campaign called Making Justice Work. “Across the [youth work] sector, we want to look at how government invests in young people and community by listening to the experts in the field.
“For some strange reason, when it comes to young people, youth service providers’ expertise in this area often gets ignored. We would like to see a community-driven justice reinvestment approach, less money on detention, more money on prevention and diversion.
“If we look at the body of research... with an early age of incarceration, a high percentage will re-enter into the adult criminal justice system.
“We need to take in the complexities of Aboriginal culture, including the language and kinship placement. It’s imperative that family and community are consulted around these issues.
“Many young people present in early childhood with challenging behaviours. Often they go undiagnosed, teachers don’t have the resources in the classroom, or the patience or the skills to really help that young person. That’s basically what we saw with Dylan.
“It’s just an ‘us and them’ approach that successive governments have taken towards working alongside Aboriginal people,” says Carroll.
She is hopeful for Voller though. “Dylan knows he has a lot of love in his life, he has a lot of family support... at the end of the day, hopefully that will carry him through.”
