From apologetic to hardline: Queensland and Northern Territory’s backflip on tackling youth crime

In both states, where the majority of incarcerated youths are Indigenous, the oscillation from ashamed to ruthless has occurred in the space of a few years

Please, I beg you, do not just put it in the filing cabinet," Pat Anderson, an Alyawarre woman and prominent Indigenous leader, told the first hearing of the royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory. The very survival of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory depends on this commission making a real impact here."

That was 2016. Footage of teenagers in the Don Dale detention centre - one stripped half-naked, hooded and strapped to a chair - was likened to the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister who called the inquiry, was deeply shocked".