Lifting the lid
Last year the suicide of an Indigenous teenage detainee plunged Western Australia’s already dysfunctional youth justice system into its worst ever crisis.
Days later, the man in charge of running the system was given his marching orders by the government.
Now former corrective services commissioner Mike Reynolds is speaking out for the first time since being sacked.
He reveals shocking details of what he believes was a state government lurching from indifference about the plight of youth detainees to crisis mode.
Since then, another teenager has taken his life in juvenile detention, and Mr Reynolds is asking a simple question: what’s changed?
WARNING: This story discusses incidents of self-harm. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the name and image of a person who has died.
When children as young as 10 are locked behind fences, it’s meant to be about safety, for them and the community.
That lie has crumbled in recent years.
Some of those children have been restrained and manhandled by officers in full tactical gear.
Others have been locked in cells for up to 24 hours a day.
It’s left them more likely to re-offend in worse ways.
Two of them have lost their lives to suicide.
Youth justice can appear a wicked problem without a solution. But that’s not what the man who once ran it in his role as the state’s corrective services commissioner believes.
“I am blaming the government,” Mike Reynolds told the ABC.
After more than three decades, Mr Reynolds’s career of service culminated in receiving the sector’s highest honour – the Australian Corrections Medal – earlier this year.
“You have made us all proud to be Western Australians and I congratulate you again on your success,” WA Premier Roger Cook wrote to him in February.
But by then, his career had come to an end.
‘It’s you or me’
The tipping point was the death of Cleveland Dodd in hospital after he self-harmed in his cell in youth detention.
In the days after the 16-year-old’s death, Mr Reynolds said he was called into a meeting with his boss, then-Justice Department head Adam Tomison.
“His words to me was, it’s you or me and it’s you,” Mr Reynolds said.
“I asked who made the decision, he said ‘government’.”
Dr Tomison did not reply to the ABC’s request for a response.
At the time, the department told the ABC Mr Reynolds had been appointed “executive director in a role overseeing and progressing a number of major operational reforms”.
If you or anyone you know needs help:
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Mr Reynolds said it was “low level project work” and “demoralising”.
“For my own welfare and mental health, I decided to leave,” he said.
Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia evaded questions at the time, instead making statements like: “We needed a reset. We needed new leadership.”
Mr Reynolds said they were looking for a scapegoat.
‘They didn’t care’
For about a decade, the dysfunction within youth justice had been growing seemingly unabated.
The final years of the sorry tale played out under Mr Reynolds’s watch although he was on medical leave for extended periods.
He claims he was limited in his ability to change the system’s trajectory in large part because the Labor government he served under wasn’t interested.
“As long as it wasn’t in the media, they didn’t care,” Mr Reynolds said.
In a statement to the ABC, former corrective services minister Bill Johnston rejected that characterisation of the government and its intentions, saying the claims were false and could not be substantiated.
But as problems grew, so did the headlines — and the government rhetoric.
After a massive riot at Banksia Hill Detention Centre in May 2023, then-premier Mark McGowan accused the young people of being engaged in a “form of terrorism”.
“It almost says to everybody that they’re not worth working with, they’re not worth supporting,” Mr Reynolds said of that attitude, which came as he was trying to manage staff shortages.
“The premier wanted to dehumanise them in my opinion. I just wanted to be able to manage them.
“We never had the resources. We never had the support.”
Mr McGowan declined to comment when approached by the ABC.
From ‘cost cutting’ to ‘chaos’
When Roger Cook took power, he promised a different approach, telling the ABC “we have to do what’s right”.
But Mr Reynolds said the reality wasn’t so different.
“It was bad when [former] minister [Bill] Johnston was in because he was only interested in cutting costs,” he said.
“Once [Papalia] came in, it was just chaos.
“He did things like cutting the briefing notes down to a maximum of two pages. So you’re writing to him to explain the complex issues with a child in custody [but it] can’t be more than two pages.
“I’ve never seen the interference in the operations of a prison by minister, except in Western Australia.”
Mr Johnston also rejected that criticism as false and unsubstantiated.
A state government spokesperson did not directly address Mr Reynolds’s allegations, instead claiming “recent leadership changes” had led to “dramatic improvements to conditions and services” in youth justice.
Crisis brings condemnation
Throughout 2022 there were calls for Banksia Hill to be closed and replaced with a purpose-built facility, for a royal commission into the system, and for the government to work with Aboriginal leaders on finding solutions.
After a Four Corners report showed young people being “folded up”, Mr McGowan met with advocates alongside government officials including Mr Reynolds.
“All of them told us at the meeting what we were doing wrong, and I didn’t disagree with what they were saying,” Mr Reynolds said.
Mr Reynolds said those with the expertise to change the system should have come forward, as he was restricted from reaching out.
“If they’d been banging on my door, I’d have opened the door,” he said.
‘Pure crisis mode’
Money was announced and change promised, but to little effect.
The president of the Children’s Court described conditions inside youth detention as “extrajudicial and unlawful punishment”.
Lockdowns – up to 24 hours a day in some cases – were twice deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court.
It led to what Mr Reynolds described as a “crazy” system, with a manager taking phone calls and manually recording the time each young person spent out of their cell.
“Really what we needed was to get them out of cells, then we didn’t need the spreadsheet,” he said.
“It was pure crisis mode. It was, ‘what do we have to do to get these people off our back’, not ‘how do we change the system?’
“We’re just trying to keep us out of the paper, keep us out of court, and, you know, try and keep everyone alive, and we obviously failed.”
Landmark inquest
Further insight into conditions inside youth detention have been revealed at the ongoing inquest into Cleveland’s death, which heard that by mid-2022, staff in the department worried about losing control of Banksia Hill.
It was agreed children who could not be safely held at Banksia Hill would be moved to Unit 18 inside Casuarina Prison – a maximum security adult facility.
It was inside this unit that Cleveland fatally self-harmed.
Dr Tomison told the inquest Unit 18 came after the department told the minister “grievous lies” about the staffing and services which would be available, conceding he should have looked into the information more closely.
Mr Reynolds was on medical leave when the decision to open Unit 18 was made and said he would have chosen a different site which didn’t have the complexities of being inside a maximum security prison.
Staff working there told Cleveland’s inquest it was not possible to ensure the safety of young people, that staff were put into senior roles without training, and that many supports – including for mental health – were absent.
The sinking ship
Six days after Cleveland died, the government announced it had appointed a new commissioner, then-police assistant commissioner, Brad Royce.
Since then, there appears to have been significant improvements in youth detention, with young people getting more time out of their cells and more programs on offer according to the government.
Average out of cell hours dropped significantly during the worst of the crisis
But at the end of August, WA recorded its second death in youth detention just 10 months after its first.
“I hate to say, it didn’t surprise me at all because what’s changed?” Mr Reynolds asked.
“Where’s the psychologists, where’s the professionals who deal in youth trauma, leading the department?
“I mean, I’m not blaming them, because I couldn’t find any either.
“Nobody wants to come into a sinking ship and Western Australia doesn’t pay enough money.”
Without meaningful change, Mr Reynolds said more suicides and riots were likely.
“Western Australia are doing the same thing every day. They’re not going to get a different result,” he said.
“Putting the right people in, giving the men and women working in those environments the support they need.
“I think there [also] needs to be greater investment in stopping kids coming into custody.
“That, to me, is sort of the silver bullet.”
Custody versus welfare
Other changes Mr Reynolds said he advocated for but were never acted on included moving youth justice out of corrective services into a welfare-focused department.
“Corrections is a custody-based service. It meets the orders of the courts and provides a safe, humane containment of adult offenders,” he said.
“Youth justice isn’t supposed to be about custody. It’s supposed to be about support, getting the kids back on track, getting them engaged, back with school, back with their community, and back into, ultimately, their homes.”
“If it was a greenfield site and I was starting again I’d have social workers, I’d have psychologists [running the facility] not detention officers,” Mr Reynolds said.
‘Horrible’ end to long career
Mr Reynolds describes the final years of his working life as a “horrible way” to end his career.
“We’re given the ultimate responsibility to keep someone alive … if somebody dies in custody, we failed, I failed as commissioner,” he said.
“I think I pushed back through the system as much as I could. Did I do it well enough? Probably not.”
Mr Reynolds said the government needed to genuinely want to change the system and be prepared to take bold action.
“Assign its own commissioner or chief executive. Give it its own status,” he said.
“Say to the people of Western Australia, ‘we’re genuinely making the change. This is going to be the flagship in youth detention and youth custody and supporting youth in the world’.”
The Department of Justice declined to comment, citing the ongoing inquest.
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