By AAP REPORTERS
The grandmother of teenager Cleveland Dodd, 16, who died in custody in October last year in a prison in Perth has criticised the decision to render the officer in charge on the night he died as unfit to testify.
Outside the Coroner’s Court in Perth, Glenda Mippy said it wasn’t right that Kyle Meade-Hunter had been excused after concerns were raised about his mental health.
“He should’ve come here and faced his trouble,” Ms Mippy said.
“He calls it trauma — what about what … we’re going through? He didn’t even know Cleveland personally.”
And the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA director Peter Collins also criticised the Department of Justice for its lack of communication over why they were not notified who had been transferred to the Unit 18 youth wing at the Casuarina Prison.
Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive in his cell in the youth wing of Casuarina Prison in Perth. (Aaron Bunch/AAP)
Mr Collins described the many disadvantages faced by First Nations detainees.
“…They reflect the experience of pretty well every young Aboriginal person in these (detention) facilities …They’re wounded, they’re damaged, they’re marginalised, they’re voiceless,” he said.
Cleveland was found hanging in his cell on October 12, 2023, but the court was told Mr Mead-Hunter’s response was inadequate and that he took many minutes to walk to the ell after first changing his clothing.
The court was also told the Department of Justice’s professional standards division had previously made findings against Mr Mead-Hunter over a previous conduct issue.
Former inspector of custodial services Neil Morgan said Western Australia’s youth detention facilities had been in crisis for more than a decade and the justice department had forgotten it was dealing with children.
“We must treat children as children,” he told a coroner on Monday.
“We should stop trying to demonise, blame and break them.
“Until that language stops I don’t see how we can progress forward.”
Professor Morgan said it was “time for the department to stop breaking the law” following two Supreme Court rulings against it.
“There’s been no sense that locking children up for upwards of 20 to 23 hours a day will somehow have a deleterious impact on them,” he said.
Aboriginal Legal Service director Peter Collins told the court two weeks before Cleveland died, his office had requested the department transfer the teen from Unit 18 to Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre but received no response.
Family members and supporters outside the Coroner’s Court in Perth (Photo AAP)
The letter said conditions at Unit 18 were affecting Cleveland’s wellbeing, he wasn’t able to access education and was being locked in his cell for long periods.
Mr Collins said the department failed to reply to most of the service’s letters, including one that raised concerns about the unit over frequent lockdowns, lack of access to education and inadequate mental health support and responses to serious harm.
He said the department transferred youth detainees to Unit 18 “under a cloak of secrecy” and it had failed to respond to questions about the closure of the unit, which was set up as a temporary facility.
Mr Collins said the facility was painted as a “silver bullet” to end the problems at Banksia Hill “but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth”.
He said detainees had been “demonised” as murderers and rapists and the facility wasn’t therapeutic or rehabilitative as promised.
He said isolating vulnerable young Aboriginal detainees at the unit was damaging to their mental health.
“Connection to family, that social and familial interaction on a daily basis with your community underpins your entire existence,” he said.
“To then be cast into a situation in Unit 18, on your own, in a cell for hours on end, with very limited out-of-cell time, confined … with little or no interaction with other young people.”
The inquest continues.
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