Children Mistreated In Immigration Detention

Australia is still subjecting children to mandatory detention.

This is in breach of our obligations under the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

Child psychiatrist Jon Jureidini from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in South Australia and Victorian Barrister Julian Burnside discuss the risk of damage for the current population of immigration detainees in an Editorial for the August issue of Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

Prime Minister Gillard announced last year that all children would be housed in the community by July 2011, but this did not happen, Dr Jureidini said.

In September 2001 there were 842 children in detention; in May 2011 there were 1,082.

“More than 30% of these children are unaccompanied minors and most have been in detention for more than six months,” Dr Jureidini said.

“We are beginning to see infants with severe separation anxiety, adolescents with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and parents who have lost the capacity to care adequately for their children.

“In our current system there is no organisation that takes full responsibility for the mental health of detainees.”

In 2004, two papers published in ANZJPH highlighted the dire psychological circumstances of children and families in prolonged detention. Dr Jureidini said that the present system of indefinite mandatory detention still seriously harms many of the people subjected to it.