National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds declares new $100m kids’ jail a waste of taxpayer funds

A new $100 million children’s jail is a waste of taxpayer money that will do nothing to make the community safer, National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds has declared.

The WA Government revealed last week the whopping price tag for the new high-security juvenile detention centre being built alongside Banksia Hill to replace the controversial Unit 18 section inside the adult prison.

But Ms Hollonds says keeping children in jails or police watchhouses is “a kind of madness” and flies in the face of evidence about what stops young people offending.

It costs more than $1 million a year to keep one child in jail, she will tell the National Press Club on Wednesday.

“Currently we are building several new children’s prisons – last week we heard the new one in Perth will cost at least $100 million,” she will say, according to a draft of her speech.

“This is wasting taxpayer funds because the evidence shows locking up young children does not make the community safer.

“These are children whom we have left waiting for help that never came, and when they’re stealing food because they are hungry, or stealing cars because they’re bored and without any hope for the future, we criminalise them.”

Ms Hollonds visited Banksia Hill in 2022 and at the time described conditions as “chilling and heartbreaking”.

She warned then-WA premier Mark McGowan and the relevant federal ministers the situation for the children in the jail was high risk.

Within the past year, two teenagers have fatally self-harmed while in the WA prison system: 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd, whose inquest is set to resume next week, and in August, a 17-year-old boy.