Sending teens to maximum security prisons shows Australia needs to raise the age of criminal responsibility

The recent transfer of a “difficult cohort” of teenagers to a maximum-security adult prison in Western Australia raises familiar questions about Australia’s prison system.

The 17 young detainees have “significant offending histories” and had for months been destroying infrastructure, assaulting staff and harming themselves at Perth’s Banksia Hill juvenile centre, according to the head of the WA justice department, Adam Tomison. Tomison didn’t elaborate on…

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