Indigenous Teens Were Hooded And Gassed In NT Detention Centre

"Let the fucker come through because when he comes through, he will be off balance. I'll pulverise, I'll pulverise the little fucker."

A report by the Northern Territory Children's Commission has revealed that a group of Aboriginal teenagers was sprayed with tear gas and had 'spit mask' hoods placed over their heads while in prison in 2014.

Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre (Supplied)

The incident took place in August 2014 and involved six teenagers, the youngest a 14-year-old, at the Don Dale Detention Centre just outside of Darwin.

Prior to the incident, the detainees were held for up to 72 hours in solitary confinement with no air conditioning, no windows and no water. 72 hours is the maximum time juveniles can remain in solitary confinement in the NT.

The teenagers allegedly began to act aggressively toward staff who then called in prison officers from an adult correctional facility, who came armed with batons and tear gas, wearing gas masks and covered in knee and shin pads.

The report, the result of an investigation by former Northern Territory Children's Commissioner Dr Howard Bath, found the actions undertaken by Don Dale staff to be excessive.

The current NT Children's Commissioner, Colleen Gwynne, told BuzzFeed News that the conditions the teenagers were subjected to coupled with the inexperience of staff to handle crisis situations thwarted attempts to calm the situation.

"What the staff said was that they just hadn't received any suitable training to respond to the incident. There's no element of crisis de-escalation or mediation or negotiation in their training. I believe properly trained staff members could have avoided this situation," Gwynne said.

"If you can find any one reason why it ended up in a riot situation, it was the prolonged isolation of young people which was way in excess of what we say is reasonable. Even the staff working with the young people said it was going to happen. They said it was inevitable. They were in an environment that was dark, it smelled and wasn't sufficient for a young person," Gwynne said.

After breaking out of their cells the teenagers were sprayed with tear gas for up to eight minutes each.

Gianluca68 / Getty Images

The entire incident was recorded on a camcorder by staff.

Commissioner for Corrections Ken Middlebrook, who was present at the time, gave permission for staff to use tear gas in place of using a corrections dog to subdue the juveniles. On the video Middlebrook says, "Mate, I don't care how much chemical you use, we gotta get him out."

After one of the detainees tries to climb through a window one prison officer on the video can be heard saying, "No let the fucker come through because when he comes through, he will be off balance. I'll pulverise the little fucker. Oh shit we're recording hey [laughs]."

Rodney Dillon, Indigenous Rights Advisor at Amnesty International Australia, says that not only did officers break international human rights conventions but they also ignored local legislation.

Rodney Dillon (Amnesty International Australia)

After the incident the teenagers were immediately moved to an adult prison.

“It’s not just international protocols that are being ignored in the Northern Territory. The report documents how one of the kids was only 14 years of age, yet was still transferred to the adult prison, which the Children’s Commissioner noted was a blatant breach of the NT’s own Youth Justice Act," Dillon said.

The Northern Territory has the second highest rate of Indigenous incarceration in the country after Western Australia.

Aboriginal young people make up almost 96 percent of the juvenile detention population in the Northern Territory despite only comprising 44 percent of the population aged between 10 and 17.