The current Don Dale youth detention centre in Darwin, Wednesday July 27, 2016. Abusive treatment of young inmates at the previous centre by officers will be the subject of a Royal Commission after disturbing footage was broadcast on ABC's Four Corners program, showing teens being tear-gassed, hit, stripped naked, and hogtied. Picture: AAP Image/Neda Vanovac.

There are no parents to wipe away tears and no games to play.

But juvenile detention was never designed to entice.

The purpose of youth detention facilities is to detain and rehabilitate children who have broken the law and been court ordered to do time in them.

More than half of children in detention in Australia are indigenous.

That’s despite indigenous Australians making up less than three per cent of the country’s national population.

The 2011 Standing Committee inquiry found that high levels of contact with the criminal justice system by indigenous young people was “a symptom of the broader social and economic disadvantage faced by many indigenous people in Australia”.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda said the “ongoing legacy of colonisation” and “everyday experience of racism of our peoples cannot be overlooked as contributing factors” to high imprisonment rates of indigenous youths.

“Similar conclusions were reached during the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,” according to a report by Amnesty International.

But what hope is there of closing the gap in youth detention if children are coming out more troubled than when they went in?

The ABC’s Four Corners this week brought it to national attention that youth detention is not always a safe place for the young and often tortured souls imprisoned within them.

The program on Monday night showed footage of offenders, mostly indigenous, being stripped naked, tear-gassed and held in solitary confinement for weeks at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin between 2014 and 2015.

In one video, then 17-year-old Dylan Voller is hooded, shackled to a restraint chair by his ankles, wrists and neck and left alone for two hours.

The ABC Four Corners program broadcast evidence of the disturbing conditions within youth detention centres in the Northern Territory.Source:ABC

President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, who said the conditions were worse than those she had seen in asylum seeker detention centres.

The Australian government ordered a Royal Commission on Tuesday after the graphic evidence emerged of prison guards assaulting the boys.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he was “appalled” by the images aired by ABC from a youth detention centre in the Northern Territory.

“Like all Australians, I’ve been deeply shocked — shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment of children at the Don Dale Centre,” he said.

“We will be establishing a Royal Commission in to these events, into this centre. We intend to do so jointly with the NT government.

“This needs a thorough inquiry, we need to move quickly on that, get to the bottom of it and expose what occurred and expose the culture that allowed it to occur and allowed it to remain unrevealed for so long.”

Human Rights Watch said it had long been urging the government to act on abuses in juvenile detention, and that the NT issues were just the tip of the iceberg.

Australian aid agency Save the Children said the inquiry needed to be Australia-wide and not just into the NT.

“This reprehensible and outrageous behaviour does nothing to help rehabilitate youth offenders who should be supported to prevent them from offending again,” spokesman Mat Tinkler said.

“The solution to preventing future abuses is not to lock up children in the first place.”

A juvenile inmate is held up against the wall at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Picture: ABCSource:ABC

INDIGENOUS CHILDREN OVER-REPRESENTED IN YOUTH DETENTION

The NT has the highest rate of youth detention in Australia and 95 per cent of all kids locked away there are indigenous.

But indigenous over-representation in youth detention is an issue that spreads well beyond the borders of the NT and runs through the veins of this so-called “lucky country”.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s December 2015 report on youth detention revealed that 54 per cent of juvenile detainees across the country between the ages of 10 and 17 are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent.

In 2013-2014, indigenous young people were 26 times more likely to be in detention than non-indigenous young people, according to a 2015 report on keeping kids out of detention in Australia by Amnesty International.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people make up just over five per cent of the Australian population of 10 to 17-year-olds, but more than half of those in detention,” the report read.

Almost nine out of 10 children in WA detention aged between 10 and 13 were Aboriginal, in 2014.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull addresses the Four Corners program.Source:AAP

NT Chief Minister Adam Giles faces questions about the alleged abuses.Source:News Corp Australia

‘IT’S HAPPENING IN QUEENSLAND TOO’

Queensland indigenous barrister Joshua Creamer alleges the treatment of children in youth detention centres in his state is just as bad as that seen in the NT.

Mr Creamer told the ABC the “situation is just as bad in Queensland as we’ve seen in the NT”.

He said children in Queensland prisons had been subjected to “physical, extreme levels of physical abuse, and psychological abuse” as recently as March this year.

“Look there are two centres in Queensland. There’s the Cleveland Centre in North Queensland, in Townsville, and there’s a centre here in Brisbane and I’ve had reports from both,” he told the ABC.

“Now I’m not saying I’ve had many, many reports, but certainly I’ve had a number of people come and talk to me about issues similar to what was seen on the Four Corners program (on Monday) night.”

Queensland Attorney General Yvette D’Ath said she was not aware of any specific cases of abuse in the state’s youth detention centres. She said allegations of mistreatment should be reported to authorities including police, the Crime and Corruption Commission, or the ombudsman.

The Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin. Picture: AAP/Neda VanovacSource:AAP

WHAT NOW?

The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples noted in 2013 that “unless the rate of increase in youth detention can be reduced, rates of incarceration across the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population are likely to continue to increase into the future”.

In a radio interview with Alan Jones on Thursday morning, Mr Turnbull said “the issue of indigenous incarceration is an absolutely top priority issue in the whole indigenous welfare closing the gap debate or discourse”.

“It is absolutely critical,” Mr Turnbull said.

“What we’re seeing is of course because of poverty, because of a cycle of welfare dependency, because of substance abuse, because of family breakdown, what we’re seeing is so many kids, indigenous kids, getting off to probably the worst possible start in life.”

Mr Turnbull was asked about alternatives to prison, including rehabilitation and community service, for minors.

“This is always the debate that goes on, the balance between the effectiveness of jails as places of rehabilitation, and of course the effectiveness of jails which people have always questioned, on the other hand the public need to be protected from people who are violent offenders,” he said.

Amnesty International and Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) on Thursday both called for the federal government to ratify the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) in order to ensure prisons are properly and independently monitored.

ALHR president Benedict Coyle said the Prime Minister’s argument that the focus of the Royal Commission must be kept narrow in order to expedite the findings is “completely misconceived”.

“I think there’s an element of wanting to sweep this under the rug and pretend it’s not happening anywhere else,” he said.

* For the purposes of youth detention in Australia, juveniles are defined as children aged between 10 and 16 years in Queensland and 10 and 17 years in every other state and territory.

megan.palin@news.com.au