The Interim Commissioner for Children and Young People Isabelle Crompton today welcomed the Custodial Inspector’s Children in Tasmania’s prisons Review Report 2025 and called for full and prompt implementation of the recommendations it makes.
“The Custodial Inspector’s report opens with a simple statement – a position long-championed by my office and one I believe any reasonable Tasmanian would accept – that children should not be in prison,” Ms Crompton said.
“Regrettably, as this report makes clear, children are routinely held in Tasmanian prisons.”
“The Custodial Inspector’s report shines a light on the sorry situation which permits children to be held in prisons from the age of 10.”
“I expect most Tasmanians would be shocked to learn the data shows children as young as 11 are routinely held in prison watch-houses, where they are detained alongside adults who may be charged with serious offences.”
“This is entirely avoidable and must change.”
Ms Crompton said the Report makes unequivocally clear that the current ‘front door’ to the youth justice system is wholly inappropriate for children.
“I challenge any member of our community calling for harsher, more punitive responses to children’s offending behaviours to read this report.”
“If they are not moved by the frankly devastating accounts of the recent experiences of children in Tasmania’s prisons, perhaps they will respond to the views of prison staff who also believe children should not be there, with one reported as confiding: ‘we have children, we’re parents, and we wouldn’t like our kids to be in here’.”
“Detention in prisons should be taken off the table for all children in this State.”
Ms Crompton commended the Custodial Inspector for centering the voices of children with experience of being held in prisons including through the Commissioner for Children and Young People’s ongoing Voices of Young People in the Youth Justice System Project.
“As the Interim Commissioner for all children and young people in this state, I applaud the Custodial Inspector’s call, echoing my own, for Tasmania to stay the course on implementing evidence-based therapeutic alternatives to incarcerating children.”
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