The Don Dale juvenile detention centre must close, and its high security unit should shut down immediately, the Northern Territory royal commission into the protection and detention of children has recommended.

The inquiry’s final report, released on Friday, found “shocking and systemic failures” over many years that were known about but ignored at the highest levels, commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda said.

“The procedures and requirements of the law have simply not been followed in many instances. The systems failed to comply with the basic binding human rights standards in the treatment of children and young people,” the report said.

It upheld shocking allegations raised during the 12 weeks of public hearings, including verbal abuse, physical control, inappropriate force and restraint, and the bribing or daring of children to carry out humiliating or degrading acts, or to commit violence against one another.

“Children and young people were subjected to regular, repeated and distressing mistreatment in detention and there was a failure to follow the procedures and requirements of the law in many instances,” the commissioners said.

“These things happened on our watch, in our country, to our children.”

The commission revealed it had referred a number of matters to police, including potential criminal conduct by youth justice officers, the harassment or threatening of witnesses or potential witnesses, and the physical, sexual and neglectful abuse of children in out-of-home residential care settings.

The NT government has three months to deliver a plan for closing Don Dale – a widely criticised centre that previously housed maximum security adult prisoners until they were transferred because it was no longer suitable for habitation. The isolated high security unit cells should be closed immediately, the report said, describing them as:“wholly inappropriate, oppressive, prison-like environment that is detrimental to [the] health, wellbeing and prospects of rehabilitation” of detainees.

Among more than 230 recommendations the commission called for:



The age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 12 and the detention of under-14s to be banned except for serious crimes.



A commissioner for children and young people to be given free access to detention centres and detainees.



The use of force to maintain “good order” and any use of teargas to be banned.



Policies of isolation, bail, body searches and transfers to be overhauled.

Recommendations for the child protection sector included:

The development of a 10-year generational strategy for children and families.



The establishment of a network of at least 20 family support centres across the NT.



The phasing out of purchased home-based care and vast improvements to out-of-home care.



Working with Aboriginal organisations to achieve an increase in kinship care placements for Indigenous children.

There are currently 35 children in Don Dale, including 23 on remand and six who are under the age of 14.

The four-volume report of more than 2,100 pages detailed a litany of failures and errors, as well as potential and actual breaches of law and international human rights standards. It targeted every level of authority, including police and executives, and ministers from the Labor and CLP governments.

“Senior executives and the management and staff at the detention centres implemented and/or maintained and/or tolerated a detention system seemingly intent on ‘breaking’ rather than ‘rehabilitating’ the children and young people in their care,” it said.

The absence of up-to-date standard operating procedures was attributed to the former corrections commissioner Ken Middlebrook and, for a limited period, Salli Cohen.

Frequent understaffing from 2010 resulted in officers – who, the report noted, had minimal or no training – being overworked “with potentially dangerous consequences”.

It made specific findings against individual guards, including Conan Zamolo, who filmed detainees inappropriately on at least three occasions and “likely made a recording of a detainee while he was in the shower”, Derek Tasker, who “put his hand or hands around the throat of detainees on three occasions”, and Trevor Hansen, who used the “wedgie” restraint technique against children.

The recommendations also appeared to address concerns raised by the former NT justice minister John Elferink about male circumcision, calling for a forum of boys, advocates, elders and leaders to review any ceremonial practice which affected the health of boys.

The findings and recommendations come at the end of a 10-month royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the Northern Territory. It acknowledged the “profound shift” it was proposing for NT authorities, but said it was necessary given the system to date had continued to “simply fail the entire community”.

“The time for tinkering around the edges and ignoring the conclusions of the myriad of inquiries that have already been conducted must come to an end.



“What we have found is disturbing on many levels, not least of course because it has occurred on our watch and in our count,” White and Gooda said on the eve of the report’s release.

The royal commission uncovered deep-seated and confronting problems in Australia “that come at an enormous human and financial cost,” they said.

“Neither will be sustainable for the NT in the short term.”

White and Gooda said their recommended changes to the youth justice and detention system would deliver savings of $335.5m by 2027.

Conversely, “doing nothing” would result in last financial year’s costs of $37.3m increasing to $113.4m by 2027. The main driver of that cost blowout would be to continue using existing facilities, they said.

NT chief minister Michael Gunner said the report was a story of the NT government’s failure to care about and protect children who needed it most.

“It will live as a stain on the Northern Territory reputation,” he said in a speech on Friday morning. “For this I am sorry. But more than this I’m sorry for the stories that live in the children we failed.”

He said the government had received the report only that morning and needed time to consider it, but he believed it shared “the same vision”. He said the government had already begun improvements with its sweeping justice reforms and housing package.

In its report the commission said many of the reforms were positive, but there continued to be “troubling incidents still occurring” in NT detention centres.

The royal commission was called after the ABC broadcast disturbing footage from inside the Don Dale detention centre and Darwin adult prison, of children being mistreated, beaten, restrained, and teargassed. It brought long running concerns to Canberra.

The commission received more than 480 witness statements, more than 320 submissions and heard from more than 210 witnesses in 12 weeks of public hearings.

Bureaucratic witnesses described a failed system that could not keep up with the volume of child protection reports, could not guarantee protection of those children, and at times covered things up.

Corrections witnesses revealed a detention system without sense or accountability. Guards were inadequately trained and got away with abhorrent alleged acts.

Juvenile witnesses – all of whom with the exception of Dylan Voller testified in private – spoke of the upbringing and poor decisions that landed them in detention, the horrors they endured there and what needed to change.

Ministerial witnesses described challenges trying to fix a broken system without cabinet support, of taking the initiative themselves without expertise of their own or seeking advice from others. Elferink remains unapologetic. The former chief minister Adam Giles recalled nothing.

Even after the hearings ended, shocking allegations and evidence continued to be presented by sector workers and advocacy bodies.