31,000 Qld Children Were Put Into Solitary Confinement Last Year — 84% Of Them Were Indigenous

Advocates are once again calling to overhaul Queensland’s youth justice system after new figures revealed almost 31,000 children in the state’s youth detention centres were placed into solitary confinement in the past 12 months, 84 per cent of which were First Nations. Between June 2021 and June 2022, 30,857 separations (the Queensland Government’s term for placing a person into isolation) were carried out. 25,800 separations involved First Nations children aged 10 to 17, and 2,863 involved children under the age of 14. The vast majority of separations lasted between six and 12 hours, but 83 lasted multiple days. “It makes me feel sick,” Gunggari person and Amnesty International Australia campaigner Maggie Munn told PEDESTRIAN.TV.