‘The system’s broken’: the crisis gripping Australia’s juvenile justice centres

A protester dressed in prison restraints during a rally in Perth against a plan to move 20 high-risk juvenile inmates out of Banksia Hill juvenile detention centre to an adult maximum security prison in July. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

“Every time there’s a knock at the door I think it’s a policeman coming to tell me he’s dead,” a Noongar grandmother of a 15-year-old boy currently being held inside Western Australia’s Casuarina men’s prison tells Guardian Australia.

“It’s beyond worrying now, it’s the expectation.”