Podcast: Liana Buchanan's office is the "eyes and ears" scrutinising Victoria's youth justice system
On an average night in Australia, there's around 800 young people locked up in youth detention. But what do we know from there? What are the conditions like inside those facilities? What support do young people get to turn their lives around? And who makes sure everything's running as it should be?
To answer those questions, meet Liana Buchanan. She's the principal commissioner at the Commission for Children and Young People in Victoria, which is the state's independent advocate for the safety and wellbeing of young people.
Here, she talks about the experiences of young people who find themselves in detention; about her team of volunteers who go inside prisons every month to scrutinise what's happening; about how misleading media stories labelling kids 'young thugs' can change the way people are treated in the justice system – but also about the positive policy progress we've made in Victoria that she's keen to protect.
And you can keep scrolling to read the full transcript of this conversation.
Sophie Raynor
Welcome to the Worth a Second Chance podcast, where we explore true stories, challenges and solutions from the frontlines of Australia's youth justice systems. My name is Sophie Raynor.
We know that when a person commits a crime, they can go to prison. That's true for adults, and to a lesser extent for people under the age of 18. On an average night in Australia, there's around 800 young people locked up in youth detention. But what do we know from there? What are the conditions like inside those facilities? What support do young people get to turn their lives around? What do they need? And who makes sure everything's running as it should be?
To answer those questions, and more, I spoke to Liana Buchanan. She's the principal commissioner at the Commission for Children and Young People in Victoria, which is the state's independent advocate for the safety and wellbeing of young people.
Liana Buchanan
There are independent eyes and ears that are watching very closely what's happening to our children and young people in our youth justice custody centers.
Sophie Raynor
Liana will appear in two episodes of the Worth a Second Chance podcast. In this first part of our conversation. Liana told me about the backgrounds and experiences of the young people who find themselves in detention, about her team of volunteers who go inside prisons every month to scrutinise what's happening, about how misleading media stories, labelling kids ‘young thugs’ can change the way people are treated in the justice system – for worse, not better – but also about the progress made in Victoria that she's keen to protect.
Liana, can you tell me about the role of your office? What does the Commission do?
Liana Buchanan
So, we have a number of different roles. But for the purposes of today's conversation about youth justice, we have a role to advocate on behalf of children and young people, including vulnerable children and young people, those who are doing it tough or have experienced disadvantage. And we have very specific legislated roles to monitor and oversight, youth justice, child protection and home care services.
Sophie Raynor
Can you paint a bit of a picture for me of the young people that you're seeing in detention in Victoria?
Liana Buchanan
Look, of course, there are many different circumstances and issues and experiences that bring children and young people into youth justice. But there's no question that there are some significant things. Often, children and young people in youth justice have experienced significant disadvantage, often significant trauma. If you look at the data, I think even from the parole board's report last year, 66, or two thirds of children and young people, 66% of children and young people in youth justice centers had a history of trauma of abuse or neglect. So that's incredibly relevant. We also know a high proportion of the young people in youth justice have significant mental health issues and needs. One in five or more have a diagnosed cognitive disability. We know that at least 40% had experienced family violence, a significant number have been expelled or been suspended from school or otherwise disengaged from school. So, you can kind of get the picture of: children, young people coming into the system, who've had a whole raft of adverse experiences that have no doubt contributed to them coming into contact with the criminal justice system.
Sophie Raynor
So, you're describing these kids who have experienced really tough things in their lives. How does the prison system or the youth justice system more broadly meet their needs?
Liana Buchanan
So, there's, there's no question that there are some supports in place. There are absolutely, I'd say very genuine attempts to understand the needs of young people and meet those needs. So, if you look at our youth justice centers, for example, there are mental health workers, there are behavioural support specialists. There are offending behaviour programs, young people in youth justice get access to schools with Parkville College and some vocational training courses. So, there are absolutely some efforts in place, some measures in place to try and meet the needs of young people in youth justice. One of the things that I would say, is, those two things I'd say one is, in Victoria, we are fortunate that we actually do quite well at diverting children and young people out of custody. So, compared to other parts of the country, we have relatively low rates of children, young people in custody. And certainly, over the last few years, the numbers of children and young people in custody has significantly decreased. That's fantastic, right. But on the other hand, what that means is that those children and young people who do end up in youth justice custody, are more likely to have particularly complex needs, particularly significant experiences of trauma or other factors that are going to kind of create significant needs that means that the kind of the effort that needs to go into supporting those young people: working with them to understand the drivers of their offending, providing the right sophistication of response, that all is needed at a pretty high level. And the reality is, we're not there yet. Not even close to being there yet. In youth justice in Victoria, I've just described some of the some of the programs, some of the supports in place, some of that has improved in recent years. But my view is, particularly given the needs and the complexity of needs amongst children and young people in our system, we actually need to keep building on that; we need a far more sophisticated level of support for those young people.
Sophie Raynor
And to put you on the spot for a minute there. That sophisticated response, what could it involve?
Liana Buchanan
I think I've kind of described there's a there's a bit more now in terms of behaviour support, in terms of clinical input, but I don't, I think the level of clinical oversight, clinical supervision that's needed, as well as input from people working together from a whole range of different disciplines – again, there's been some improvements in youth justice in recent years – but it's not at the level of an integrated, sophisticated multidisciplinary approach that I think the young people in youth justice need.
Sophie Raynor
I'd like to talk a little bit more about the function of the Commission to oversight conditions inside youth detention facilities, do you want to start off by telling me more about what you do there.
Liana Buchanan
So, we have a number of fantastic volunteers who go in, they're called independent visitors, they go in to each centre once a month, a significant number of them go in. And their job is to go in and speak to children and young people. Ideally, they try and get to every child and young person in each centre. And just hear from them; hear how things are going, who what's working, and hear what kinds of concerns or issues they have. And then we try and of course have those issues or concerns kind of dealt with at a local level. But what that does is it gives me a full picture about what's happening for children, young people, much more so than if I was to rely on just my own ability to go in or even Commission staff capacity to go in which we also do. It also means you can see trends. And we see significant serious issues that can't be addressed necessarily at the level of each centre, that we need to take up with either, the Commissioner for Youth Justice, or potentially the Minister for Youth Justice. That's one of the approaches we take. We also have a function whereby every single serious event, serious incident that occurs in youth justice centers, we receive a report about that. And that means that we can go in after reviewing an incident report, we can ask for further information. We can have a look at CCTV footage, we can try and understand what's happened, what's gone wrong, if anything, and can potentially make some recommendations about what needs to happen going forward. We've picked up a whole raft of issues through that function. I won’t detail them all. But as you might imagine, we look very closely at any incident where there's been a use of force, a deployment of OC spray, those types of incidents, we look at them very closely so we can give feedback to the system about whether actually that incident could be prevented, whether there was potential there for de-escalation, and indeed whether the use of force was acceptable and appropriate and proportionate in the circumstances. Finally, we can conduct inquiries either into what's happened for an individual child in youth justice or systemic inquiries that we can table in Parliament. Our first one of those systemic inquires in youth justice looked at the use of isolation lockdowns. That was back in 2017. Unfortunately, we're still contending with some of those issues. And that enables us to have a very fulsome look, to speak to children, young people, we look at the data, we analyse the policies, then make a whole raft of system-wide recommendations for change.
Sophie Raynor
So, you're making these recommendations, and can you give me a couple of examples of when the Commission's report or recommendations have been heard?
Liana Buchanan
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I just I just mentioned, the inquiry that we titled ‘The same four walls’, which, back in 2017, found an unacceptable use of isolation, particularly in response to incidents of poor behaviour by children and young people, we find that actually isolation is being used in ways that we thought was against the law, as a form of punishment for children and young people. And we found instances of isolation being imposed. And let's be clear, isolation is effectively solitary confinement, we found instances for children and young people were subjected to days and days, and indeed, in some cases, weeks of isolation. Now, we made a raft of recommendations, I have been very pleased to see most of those recommendations are implemented, we still have reason to raise concern from time to time about isolation, we’d still like to see it used even this. But there has been a very substantial reduction in the use of isolation, very substantial, since then, and indeed, a whole kind of raft of improvements to reporting, it's actually much easier to see how many children are being subjected to isolation and why. That's one example. Another, which is probably is public, although I'm sure we've discussed it in any reports, is that we conducted a number of smaller inquiries or incident reviews over time, looking at the deployment of OC spray. And indeed, incidents where staff used force. And in particular, we were looking at incidents where the SESG, so the security group from Corrections Victoria, was deployed inside youth justice, and was involved in Incident Response. SESG from Corrections Victoria, so the adult prisons security response group were deployed in youth justice from memory in early 2017, until the middle of last year. And through that time, I as you might imagine, took a particularly firm view that that was not the appropriate response for children and young people that actually had a child and youth focused response. And indeed, we saw a number a significant number of examples of incidents where our finding was that the nature of response from that group from those staff was completely inappropriate for children and young people. I was incredibly pleased. By the middle of last year, when the SESG from Corrections Victoria removed from youth justice, leaving still a security and response emergency team and youth justice, but a child and youth focused one. And for me, that was an overdue recognition, but a recognition, that when we're housing children, young people in specialised youth focused child appropriate facilities. Every aspect of that facility needs to be child and youth focused, including the incident response team.
Sophie Raynor
I want to ask a bit of a curly question here. If someone's listening to this podcast, and they're thinking, well, presumably there was a reason why that security team was in the facility in the first place. And now they're gone. Whatever they were responding to is still there. Is there mayhem in the prisons? Are there riots going on? What do you say to that?
Liana Buchanan
I would say, no, there's not mayhem; no there are not riots. I would say if anything, the number of incidents involving violence, whether it's violence by staff, to young people, young people to young people, or young people that staff, over the longer view over the past four or five years, those incidents have substantially and thankfully reduced. Now, as people will know if they watch the mainstream media, that's not to say there are not still really concerning incidents in youth justice that don't still have some incidents where young people are harmed by other young people, or indeed where young people, assault or are involved in violence against staff. That is that is absolutely unfortunately still the case. But those incidents have reduced. And I'm certainly confident that you don't need staff brought in from the adult correction system to try and prevent or deter those types of incidents that clearly, frankly, just doesn't work. There's no deterrent effect. Nor do I think, based on what I saw in recent years, and indeed what I'm seeing now, nor do I think that that that kind of team from the adult system is needed, is needed on an ongoing basis.
Sophie Raynor
And so, we're talking here about what we don't need in terms of stuffing inside a youth justice facility. So then obviously, the question that follows from that is, what do we need.
Liana Buchanan
When I'm talking about youth justice when I'm describing some of the things that I see going wrong. And I'm focused, of course, on children, young people, because that's my job. And they don't have a whole lot of other voice. Frankly, there's no union agenda, no people. So, it's kind of my job to try and convey some of what they experience. It's really easy for that to sound like criticisms of staff, when you look at youth justice workers, they are not particularly highly paid; far from it. And they are working with children and young people with some of the most complex needs imaginable. And they have one of the most complex and hardest jobs. So, I want to recognise that. My view is that we need to recognise the complexity of the work in youth justice; I think that there's a good argument to uplift the capability, probably the remuneration for people working in there. And I also think we need a much bigger deployment of people with different disciplines, with different clinical expertise, different understanding of adolescent development, different understanding of the ways in which to understand young people's behaviour, and act to influence that behaviour. We have a bit of that in youth justice at the moment, but nowhere near enough. So, I actually think there is still a significant piece of work to do for the system, to look at who is employed in youth justice, whether we have the right mix of skills from the right mix of areas of expertise and knowledge. And frankly, I just need to recognise the young people who are in significantly complex needs. And we need a service system and a staffing structure and mix that will better meet those needs.
Sophie Raynor
Before we wrap up, what else would you like to say about youth justice in Victoria?
Liana Buchanan
One of the things that I would say, still affects children and young people in the system and staff actually, is that there's not yet a stable and adequate number of staff in our system. And I think that's also been impacted by COVID, and illness. So, what that means for children young people, is that they still, and this has been a long-term problem, they are still too often subjected to situations where they can't, it's unlock time, it's time for them to get up and out. And ideally go to programs and go to school, and go to their education. But they can't get out of the room, because there aren't enough staff who've been able to come in on that day, to open the unit safely. So that's a pretty significant, ongoing issue for the system. And if you think about it, being closed in a room is pretty tough for any of us. If you're an adolescent and indeed, if you're an adolescent, whose capacity to regulate your behaviour, and your brain development has been impacted by your experiences, whether experience of trauma or other experiences, it gets even harder; if you're an adolescent or a young person with mental health issues, then being locked in the room gets even harder. So, I think we can't underestimate the impact that has then have settled or otherwise young people are and when we're looking at the context of incidents of disruption, aggression, violence, inside our youth justice centres, it can't overlook the fact that the way young people are treated, at least in part contributes to some of that scenario. So, I'd say that the other thing that I think is important for people to know if they haven't been inside one of our youth justice centres, it might be easy to think that these are kind of nice, child friendly, soft, residential kind of environments. I do honestly think a lot of people who would conceive that.
Sophie Raynor
Is that the case?
Liana Buchanan
That is not the reality. Amongst my many jobs I've had a job of oversighting adult prisons. And so, I've been into most of the adult prisons in this state, and I would say the physical infrastructure in Parkville and Malmsbury, the very limited movement control, the very high fences with razor wire on the top of each one, the feel inside these centers indeed, also inside the accommodation units, is as austere and harsh as any adult maximum security prison. So, I think when we're thinking about what we're doing to try and support young people, and try and provide genuine opportunity for rehabilitation, the physical environment is pretty significant. And I think we have to say, at the moment, there is no way that we have infrastructure that is fit for purpose.
Sophie Raynor
You've been close up to Victoria's youth justice system for a while now. And I'd love to know, where do we go from here?
Liana Buchanan
Well, I have the advantage or disadvantage of having been in this role watching the system for six years now. And we went through a period from about 2016 into 2017, at least, where things were pretty unsettled in youth justice; that was hitting the front pages of the media quite a lot. And indeed, there's a kind of parallel interest in covering, you know, good old kind of young thugs, lots and lots of stories about violence amongst young people in the community; it was a bit of a perfect storm. And that contributed, I think, to a very punitive approach being taken, certainly in a pretty punitive communication by government. And I think some of that translated into the way children and young people were dealt with in the youth justice system. I've seen that very gradually shift. We now have a Victorian Government Youth Justice Strategic Plan that recognises that children must be treated differently to adults that understands that prevention and diversion and early intervention are much more effective, that custody, if needed at all should be the last resort. So, our settings have improved. Our centers themselves have improved, but we are still on the journey, we've still got a long way to go. The system has a long way to go. And it's fascinating, every, every media story I read about a recent incident of violence in youth justice. I'm incredibly fearful that the narrative will revert, that it will return to this punitive tough-on-crime, tough on kids, law and order kind of narrative and approach. And we know that doesn’t work, that if you look to punish and apply an intensely kind of security focused approach to children, young people, it absolutely backfires. So, I'm very protective of the good things that we have at the moment in terms of our policy settings. We just need to build on them. And we need to make sure that our youth justice centers and our whole system actually delivers on the promise of those positive principles.
Sophie Raynor
That was Liana Buchanan speaking to Worth a Second Chance about the young people in detention in Victoria.
Worth a Second Chance is a community campaign from Jesuit Social Services. We’re calling for a more fair, humane and effective youth justice system – and we need your help. Learn more, and join the campaign at worthasecondchance.com.au
Thanks to Liana Buchanan for speaking with me today, and you can find new conversations every second Wednesday. My name is Sophie Raynor, and this was Worth A Second Chance.