Six years after a Four Corners expose of the Northern Territory's juvenile justice system triggered international outrage and a royal commission, the program launched a forensic investigation of youth detention in Western Australia amid allegations of the use of excessive force and unlawful confinement.
Journalist Grace Tobin gives an insight into the challenges of producing the story.
How did your investigation in the WA youth detention system come about?
It was almost 12 months ago that I first started speaking to contacts in Western Australia about the state's only youth detention centre, Banksia Hill.
I was being told children were locked down in solitary confinement. They were lashing out at guards. They were suicidal.
As the months went by, and I juggled multiple other projects, I kept across the rapidly deteriorating situation in Western Australia.
By July, conditions at Banksia Hill had become so bad that the West Australian government had transferred 17 children to a maximum-security adult prison to be detained in a separate wing.
Attempted suicides and self-harm incidents were dramatically escalating and a class action lawsuit was gathering speed as more and more past and present detainees made allegations of mistreatment.
With the end of the year fast approaching, I was asked to file for the final program of the Four Corners' season. I knew it had to be Banksia Hill. We had to crack it open. And we had just seven weeks to do it well.
My colleague, Patrick Begley, and I started by calling anyone and everyone we thought could help: lawyers, advocates, researchers and local MPs.
We spoke to the families of children who had been locked up. Their harrowing experiences of Banksia Hill would form the backbone of our story. First-hand accounts from the boys themselves were critical. But we knew we needed more. We needed evidence of what was happening inside — and we needed it fast.
What were the challenges involved in investigating this story?
Our pursuit of video footage for this story began the moment we started and didn't end until a few days before we went to air. Obtaining it was difficult (I can't go into the specifics) but the challenge once we did finally get hold of it was working out the significance of what it showed.
There was no doubt the "folding-up" restraint looked extremely painful. It was disturbing to watch, especially the body-cam footage that included audio of a child screaming out: "I can't breathe."
We started asking almost everyone we spoke to whether they'd heard of "folding up", seen it or experienced it. Our research revealed it was being commonly used by guards at Banksia Hill.
But we still didn't know anything about its safety risk.
After weeks of more digging — trawling through government reports, court records and transcripts of inquiries — we finally confirmed the practice had been banned in Queensland youth detention centres back in 2017.
A review had found the position put children at risk of suffocation and death. These dangers were also highlighted in the Don Dale royal commission that same year.
It was a revelatory moment in our investigation. I felt sick that the West Australian government was still allowing a practice like this to be used on children. The stakes of getting this footage to air suddenly got a lot higher.
But nothing is ever that simple with an investigation like this.
The whole premise of our story was highly sensitive and legally fraught because it involved children charged with criminal offences.
In Western Australia, even with the permission of a child's family and their lawyer, we were still extremely restricted in how much we could reveal about each case.
It meant countless hours in meetings with ABC lawyers, trying to forge a path for the story that included as much detail and transparency as we possibly could achieve.
We got there in the end, but what we were legally allowed to include in our program in some ways was only a tiny insight into the lives of these boys and their families.
There is a myriad really complex issues at play: social, health, housing, education and poverty, just to name a few.
Our biggest challenge was trying to encapsulate a sense of all that in just 45 minutes of television.
Personally, this story also took an emotional toll on me. The families and children who opened up and trusted us are some of Australia's most-vulnerable and marginalised people.
They not only want to be heard but understood. And no matter how hard you try to do justice to their stories, you can't help but feel like you're falling short.
The challenge is trying to push through that rollercoaster of emotions and remain focused on getting the best possible investigation to air.
What impact has the story had?
West Australian Premier Mark McGowan was forced to announce a crisis summit into youth justice as well as a review of "folding up", with the potential to ban it.
Both the premier and Corrective Services Minister Bill Johnston were exposed for being previously "unaware" of the use of the restraint technique in Western Australia, despite it being banned in Queensland five years earlier.
There are ongoing calls for the Council of Attorneys-General to publicly release its secret report into raising the age of criminal responsibility.
Our investigation revealed that the majority of states and territories supported raising the age to 14, "without exception", in 2020 but the report has since been buried and public access denied.
This week, federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told parliament that steps were now being taken to release it.
Investigative journalism is daunting and unnerving most of the time.
Admittedly, I get completely consumed by every project I work on — sometimes to the point of obsession.
There are definitely moments in the weeds of it all that I question why I do it. But it's always an easy answer: I'm driven by uncovering injustices and corruption, and I take, very seriously, my responsibility to hold the powerful to account. It's an absolute privilege to do it at a program like Four Corners.
Watch the Four Corners program, Locking Up Kids, on iview.
