Prison Officers were watching movies while 16-year-old Indigenous teenager self-harmed

ABC NEWS (Australia)

An interim report into the death of Indigenous teenager, Cleveland Dodd, inside the controversial Unit 18 youth detention facility in Perth - has found prison officers were "resting or watching movies" on the night the 16-year-old self-harmed. And a warning, this story includes images of an indigenous person who has died.

Transcript

00:00 "Cleveland should be alive today. The fact he is not is without question a devastating

00:07 tragedy. Put simply, we let him down."

00:12 Unit 18, inside an adult maximum security prison, was supposed to be a temporary facility

00:18 to house the state's most challenging juvenile detainees after major riots at Banksia Hill.

00:25 Earlier this week, an ABC investigation exposed a litany of failures in the early hours of

00:29 October 12th, when Cleveland Dodd attempted suicide in his Unit 18 cell.

00:36 After initially praising the response of officers, the Minister has released an interim report

00:41 confirming Cleveland Dodd twice told officers on the night he was going to commit suicide

00:47 and how he'd do it. He shouldn't have been in the cell with a damaged vent as it posed

00:52 a suicide risk. The officer who found him wasn't carrying a radio. That officers inside

00:57 the control room were resting or watching movies, and that the officer in charge of

01:02 Unit 18 showed a lack of urgency in responding.

01:06 "Individually, none of these things are acceptable. Collectively, they are disturbing and confirm

01:13 the need for significant cultural change."

01:17 Exactly what that cultural change will be remains unclear. For now, the government has

01:22 announced a series of operational changes to bolster the surveillance of juveniles in

01:28 detention. It's a baptism of fire for Brad Royce, who has only been in the job for two

01:33 weeks.

01:34 "Those things are confronting and they need change."

01:37 The overhaul that's too late for Cleveland Dodd and his family, which says change is

01:42 not delivered by words alone.

01:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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