Potential test case on the state’s use of watch houses to detain children takes unexpected turn, with hundreds possibly affected
The Queensland supreme court has ordered the urgent transfer of three children from police watch houses by 10pm on Friday, after the state government conceded it had no lawful basis forAdvocates say the admission by the state’s solicitor general, Gim Del Villar KC, raises concern that potentially hundreds of children have been detained in Queensland’s police watch houses, alongside adults, unlawfully.
A Cairns-based youth organisation, Youth Empowered Towards Independence, lodged the case on Wednesday on behalf of several children, seeking a writ ofLawyers for the organisation initially sought to argue that the state’s practice of holding children in watch houses for extended periods, due to a lack of space in detention centres, was not lawful.
But the basis for the case changed by “happenstance” on Friday, when Del Villar told the court he could not produce specific court orders that provided for children to be held on remand in police custody, pending their transfer to youth justice. After the concession, Justice Martin Burns ordered the three children be transferred to a youth detention facility by 10pm on Friday.
For several years, the Queensland government has held children for extended periods of time, in some casesThe situation has led to
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