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Locking kids up doesn't work. It hasn't worked in the past and it won't work now. We have so much proof that it doesn't work yet we still keep doing it.

Can someone please explain this to me?

We all need to get behind the organisations calling for the federal government to pull itself together and commit to a national emergency summit on youth justice. There are more than 200 groups across the country which have signed an open letter asking Anthony Albanese to get his act together (they are more diplomatic than me. Good on them). A federal government spokesperson responded to the open letter saying that only states and territories can set justice policies. Eye roll.

The acting chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services Nerita Waight said state and territory governments across the country are actively pursuing punitive policies that are driving the mass incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Too right. That's what the figures are telling us.

"Right now, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being criminalised and imprisoned at alarming rates. This is because state and territory governments are pursuing policies that criminalise children and make communities more dangerous - all in the name of political point-scoring."

Ohmigod, you just have to read the tragic story of Cleveland Dodd to know she is 100 per cent correct. He took his own life in a WA prison after months in solitary confinement. He was just 16 years old. The WA Coroner described the inquest into Cleveland's death this way: "The harrowing evidence I heard . . . has made this inquest the saddest I have presided over," he told the court.

And if one devastating anecdote doesn't persuade you, try these stats for size, all part of the Australian Human Rights Commission's work on juvenile injustice. National........

© The Examiner