A half century later, today, imagine the same photo with the face changed from that of the Vietnamese girl to a Palestinian girl in Gaza, a Ukrainian girl, a South Sudanese girl, a Yemeni girl, an Iraqi girl, an Afghani girl. Imagine, yes. Impact none. But for all of them hell is on earth.” says legal columnist HUGH SELBY.

There’s an image that my memory won’t let fade away: the naked, screaming nine-year-old old Vietnamese girl burning from napalm, a defoliant dropped from a plane in June 1972. 

Looking again at the photo, I saw that my memory had played tricks, leaving out the other children and the soldiers, all of them on a road in an eerie, grey landscape. A hell on earth.

Everyone in that photo, children and adults, were victims of a pointless war, fought for the benefit of those who had, or wanted power.

That photo had an impact. It went around the world, pre-internet, and it forced viewers to confront the question: “Is this a war worth fighting?”

A half century later, today, imagine the same photo with the face changed from that of the Vietnamese girl to a Palestinian girl in Gaza, a Ukrainian girl, a South Sudanese girl, a Yemeni girl, an Iraqi girl, an Afghani girl. Imagine, yes. Impact none. But for all of them hell is on earth.

Images that once caused people to re-evaluate their beliefs are now passe. Que sera sera.

Out of sight and out of mind

Those images are not all of events far, far away. In mid 2016, the ABC exposed the 2014 maltreatment of young people, aged 14-17, in the Northern Territory at the Don Dale detention centre. 

Kids locked in their cells were sprayed with tear gas. Those in charge told lies to explain it, lies that were exposed by CCTV and handycam recordings. 

But that wasn’t all. The ABC in a program titled Australia’s Shame showed the use of spit hoods and shackles on juveniles, footage of children being thrown to the ground and the use of solitary confinement.

Within a day, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull set up a Royal Commission. The endemic problems in detainee management had been investigated before, but not with the widespread public attention garnered by the ABC program.

The image of a youth inmate wearing a spit hood (which he did for almost two hours), like the Napalm girl, captured hearts and minds for long enough that there was a proper response. Look at that photo and ask yourself: “If that is not torture, what is it?” 

Sadly, there were then, and still are today, people in leadership and elected positions who are prepared to defend that conduct, keeping a straight face and resolutely not turning their minds to what they would have thought, or would think, if they, or one of their family, was restrained in that manner.

Why do we elect such people? Why do we allow them to manage correctional centres, when to be an apologist for that conduct is to display hateful prejudice, and to deny detainees’ human rights, that is the antithesis of any decent Australian’s commitment to a fair go?

The fact that the officers thought that such a response was appropriate, and that it was sanctioned by management, reveals fundamental gaps both in the values of management and staff, and in the training and work competencies that they ought to have.

The Americans had the good grace to perform their torture offshore at Guantanamo Bay. Those in the NT are quite happy to display theirs on shore and for all to see.

The Royal Commission found that over the previous decade children detained in the NT had been mistreated (for example, by being denied water, food and the use of toilets, being put in choke holds), verbally abused, humiliated, isolated or left alone for long periods.

The Commission stated that many children held in detention had been assaulted by staff, who either wilfully ignored rules or were unaware of the rules. 

It found that the NT corrections system operated with the aim of “breaking” rather than “rehabilitating” children.

It found that lasting psychological damage was the outcome for some detainees 

Then and now, complicit politicians

The Commission found that senior government members were aware of, but chose to ignore, these abusive practices. This matches the passive avoidance of the Andrew Barr government when it comes to responding to the myriad problems at the AMC and at the Bimberi Youth Detention Centre. 

The proven, successful government and management response here in Canberra is to stick collective heads in the sand and keep them there because, in the absence of an opposition, there is no need to respond to criticism.

The NT Commission is but a fading memory, an event to be ignored. As The Guardian newspaper reported last September, “the NT is falling over itself to repeat these abuses”. 

The current NT government has bucked the trend of raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, and instead made children as young as 10 criminally responsible. It will reintroduce the use of spit hoods and recently changed the bail laws so that more young people alleged to have committed offences are kept in detention until their hearing. 

Among NT politicians the notion of social improvement is to leap backwards a century or so. I am surprised that they haven’t yet floated the idea of public floggings and brandings, but give them time.

Their corrections commissioner (who worked as a police officer in the AFP for more than 20 years) is quoted as saying that the newly proposed law changes, that give more openings to corrections staff to use violence, were justified because, “we can’t focus on the rehabilitation of young people in custody until we get safety and security right”.

This has to be called out for what it is: a licence to engage in physical and mental torture of children and teenagers, sanctioned and endorsed by Australian politicians who no longer pay even lip service to notions of rehabilitation.

We don’t have to look far to find out why the focus is on “safety and security” rather than the welfare of inmates. 

The NT prison population has rocketed under the present government, so much so that private prison guards are now employed in growing numbers. That infuriates the regular staff.

Rehabilitation is dead

The disinterest in rehabilitation in the NT matches that here in the ACT. Our prisons for adults and young alike are containment warehouses with very little offered to staff or prisoners that would give prisoners a chance at a better, crime-free life.

The ABC did us all an important service by sending reporters to sit in during a week in July at the NT Youth Justice Court. Their reporting included that despite court orders a number of young people were not assessed for cognitive impairment or mental illness. The waiting time for such assessments has increased from six weeks to up to a year.

In one case a 17-year-old girl had waited 16 months for an assessment for Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. A history of alcohol intake by the mother during pregnancy is a crucial factor. The diagnosis and “treatment” is multi-disciplinary. The earlier the intervention the better the outcomes for the affected child. To be aged 17 is not an early diagnosis. To wait 16 months is pathetic.

A court system that lacks professional assessments of those whose lives and futures it must manage is not a 21st century justice system. It is a farce and a sham.

We are horrified by the actions of Netanyahu, Putin and Trump as these affect the innocent, including children

But we should also be outraged by the willingness of politicians and others in the Northern Territory, and here in the ACT, to treat alleged offenders and proven offenders as trash, as people who can be assaulted with impunity, who can spend their days, months and years uselessly behind the wire. Another kind of hell on earth.

Recently the Barr government proposed that it be mandatory that our pets have three hours of contact with their human each day.

If they were to require that each detainee had three hours of contact with rehabilitation services each day then I reckon we’d have an AMC and Bimberi that we, the inmates and the staff could be proud of.

Is it better to be a dog than a troubled youth in the nation’s capital?

Former barrister Hugh Selby is a CityNews columnist, principally focused on legal affairs.