‘Like Guantánamo’: the children locked in solitary for weeks at a time in Queensland youth prison

Widespread and ongoing use of solitary confinement is further traumatising and criminalising young people in Townsville’s Cleveland youth detention centre, according to staff, youth workers and inmates. Illustration: Ben Sanders/The Guardian

In the belly of the Cleveland youth detention centre is a school with teachers but often no students.

It is ringed by accommodation blocks where, sources allege, hundreds of school-age children have been kept for extended periods in solitary confinement – in circumstances that may breach Queensland’s own laws – because there were not enough guards to let them out.