Magill Youth Training Centre

Last updated

Magill Youth Training Centre
Australia South Australia location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location in South Australia
Location23 Glen Stuart Road, Woodforde, SA [1]
Coordinates 34°54′28″S138°41′07″E / 34.907736°S 138.685236°E / -34.907736; 138.685236
StatusClosed
Opened1869
ClosedSeptember 2012

The Magill Youth Training Centre (more correctly Magill Training Centre), also known as the Boys Reformatory, McNally Training Centre and South Australian Youth Training Centre (SAYTC) since its founding in 1869, was the last iteration of a series of reformatories or youth detention centres in Woodforde, South Australia. The centre came under criticism in the 2000s for "barbaric" and "degrading" conditions and was replaced by a new 60-bed youth training centre at Cavan in 2012.

Contents

History

1869: First institution

The first official State institution for children in South Australia, completed in 1869, was the Magill Industrial School, as a home for children who were destitute, neglected, or orphaned, [2] and placed in State care, but not yet placed in foster homes or in employment. [3] They had previously been housed in the Grace Darling Hotel in Brighton. [4] The Girls' Reformatory, Magill, shared the site from 1881 to 1891 as did the Boys' Reformatory, Magill, from 1869 to 1880. Misbehaving boys in the Industrial School were placed in the Reformatory. [4]

1880–1891: The Fitzjames

Between 1880 and 1891, the boys were moved to a moored hulk called the Fitzjames at Largs Bay [5] and later further up the Port River (and various other anchorages nearby, depending on the weather [6] ), with the girls remaining at Magill. The Fitzjames was a wooden sailing ship built in 1852 which carried more than 1,800 immigrants from England to Australia. [7] After leaking badly in 1866 it was declared unseaworthy and condemned and left to rot on the Yarra River in Melbourne. [7] It was purchased by the South Australian Government in 1876 as a quarantine ship [6] and used to temporarily house immigrants with infectious diseases. Between 1880 and 1891 the hulk was used to house boys convicted of crimes or determined to be "uncontrollable". [7] Pumps were operated by the boys for up to three hours a day to expel water that was leaking into the hulk and keep it from sinking. Because of its poor conditions, the hulk became known as "Hell afloat". [8]

A Royal Commission was ordered into the Destitute Board in 1883, which found the boys at Fitzjames in "pallid and dull appearance" and conditions described as "depressing" with "wearisome monotony of life", "gross improprieties" between younger children and older youths and officers, "deplorable" education standards and "defects in the dietary and want of open-air exercise". [7] The Way Commission tabled its report in State Parliament in 1885. The report recommended Fitzjames' immediate closure and relocation of the boys to a land-based facility. Six years later the boys were removed from the Fitzjames and moved back to the site of the Magill Industrial School.[ citation needed ]

The Fitzjames was towed up the Port River into the Jervois Basin, where it now rests among a group of other scuttled ships in the Jervois Basin Ships' Graveyard. [6]

1891–1967

In 1891 a new Girls' Reformatory was built in Edwardstown, South Australia, [9] and the Industrial School was moved into the girls' quarters at Magill, once again sharing the site with the Boys' Reformatory. [10] The Training School moved to Edwardstown in 1898 (renamed Glandore in 1949). [11]

1967–2000s

In 1967 the site was established as the McNally Training Centre, for boys aged 15–18 sentenced by Juvenile Court or being held on remand. [12] Younger boys aged 9–15 were sent to Brookway Park. [13] In 1979 the McNally Training Centre became the South Australian Youth Training Centre (SAYTC) for youths aged between 15 and 18. [14]

In 1993 the site became the Magill Training Centre [10] to house young people aged 10–14, and the boys aged 15–18 were moved to a new purpose-built facility, the Cavan Training Centre. [15] Young women from the South Australian Youth Remand and Assessment Centre (SAYRAC) were moved to Magill and housed at a separate section of the Centre when SAYRAC closed. [10]

By the 2000s, the department acknowledged the need for a replacement facility for the ageing institution, and incidents at the facility between 2004 and 2008 were investigated for the Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry ("the Mullighan Inquiry"). [10]

Criticisms and controversies

In addition to the criticisms of the Fitzjames Reformatory Hulk in the Way Commission Report tabled in South Australian Parliament in 1885, the Adelaide Boys' Reformatory, South Australian Youth Training Centre, McNally Training Centre and Magill Youth Training Centre all received significant public criticism throughout their history. For example, in 1933 a former police superintendent described the then Adelaide Boys' Reformatory as "an institution for bad boys to make others bad." [16]

The South Australian Children's Welfare and Public Relief Board was aware of sexual abuse at the site in the late 1940s and early 1950s. [3]

In 1969, after 10 boys absconded from McNally Training Centre, the superintendent at the time advocated the reintroduction of caning and the Minister of Social Welfare approved the policy, despite objections of the acting director of Social Welfare who held that caning was "degrading" and "contrary to modern methods of treatment of offenders." Boys were placed in "the cabin" or "the dungeon", a solitary confinement cell, for up to 48 hours if they had absconded or were seen as potential absconders. [3] One boy aged 14 held in the centre in the early 1960s reported he was stripped naked and placed in solitary confinement for three days as a punishment for an attempted breakout. [3] By 1983 corporal punishment was prohibited again, although children could still be placed in detention for up to eight hours. [17]

A Commission of Inquiry was held into Children in State Care and Children on APY Lands led by the Hon EP Mullighan QC and tabled in South Australian Parliament in 2008. The commission heard from ten people held in the Magill Reformatory in 1950s and 1960s who were sexually abused or raped by staff and older boys. [3]

The physical conditions were described as "run down", "appalling", and "a very, very sad place", with cells 2 by 3 metres (6 ft 7 in × 9 ft 10 in) in size, and windows too high for small children to see out of. [18]

Calls for closure

After a tour of the site by Australia's Youth Representative to the United Nations, Chris Varney, in 2009, the centre was described as "the worst of its kind" and a "living human rights abuse". [19] In 2009 more than 40 welfare groups and individuals including the executive director of the Youth Affairs Council of South Australia and chief executive officer of Anglicare SA signed an open letter to the South Australian Premier calling for a closure of the site for its appalling conditions and contravention of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child. [20] The South Australian Guardian for Children described the centre as "barbaric", and "a blight on the state" and the Social Inclusion Commission described the conditions there as "deplorable". [18] MP Mark Parnell called it "barbaric" and "degrading". [21]

Amidst these criticisms, the then South Australian Minister for Families and Communities Jennifer Rankine described support available for young offenders as "second to none" and a spokesperson for Rankine stated that while "it's clear the Magill Youth Training Centre needs to be replaced in time" that the state budget "does not provide for that and there will be no change of heart". [18]

The site was closed in 2012, after the announcement of a new $67 million 60-bed facility to be constructed in Cavan to replace the Magill Youth Training Centre and Cavan Training Centre, at Cavan. [22]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Dale Youth Detention Centre</span>

The Don Dale Youth Detention Centre is a facility for juvenile detention in the Northern Territory, Australia, located in Berrimah, east of Darwin. It is a detention centre for male and female juvenile delinquents. The facility is named after Don Dale, a former Member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 1983 to 1989 and one-time Minister for Correctional Services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Port River</span> Tidal estuary north of Adelaide, South Australia

The Port River is part of a tidal estuary located north of the Adelaide city centre in the Australian state of South Australia. It has been used as a shipping channel since the beginning of European settlement of South Australia in 1836, when Colonel Light selected the site to use as a port. Before colonisation, the Port River region and the estuary area were known as Yerta Bulti by the Kaurna people, and used extensively as a source of food and plant materials to fashion artefacts used in daily life.

A reformatory or reformatory school is a youth detention center or an adult correctional facility popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western countries. In the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concerns about cities, poverty, immigration, and gender following industrialization, as well as from a shift in penology to reforming instead of punishing the criminal. They were traditionally single-sex institutions that relied on education, vocational training, and removal from the city. Although their use declined throughout the 20th century, their impact can be seen in practices like the United States' continued implementation of parole and the indeterminate sentence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magill, South Australia</span> Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Magill is a suburb of Adelaide straddling the City of Burnside and City of Campbelltown council jurisdictions, approximately 7 km east of the Adelaide CBD. It incorporates the suburb previously known as Koongarra Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glandore, South Australia</span> Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Glandore is a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, partly in the City of Marion and partly in the City of West Torrens. The name is believed to come from Glandore in County Cork, Ireland, whence the family of John O'Dea, one of the original property owners of the area, came.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stepney, South Australia</span> Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Stepney is a small triangular near-city suburb of Adelaide within the City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters. Stepney contains a mix of retail, manufacturing, professional services and distribution outlets within a cosmopolitan population strongly influenced by post World War II immigration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandra Kanck</span> Australian politician

Sandra Myrtho Kanck is a South Australian politician. She was a member of the South Australian Legislative Council from 1993 to 2009, first elected for the Australian Democrats for an eight-year term at the 1993 election and was re-elected for the Democrats for another eight-year term at the 2002 election. Kanck announced her parliamentary resignation in November 2008, taking effect in January 2009. Democrats nominee David Winderlich filled the upper house casual vacancy in a joint sitting of the Parliament of South Australia in February 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lytton, Queensland</span> Suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Lytton is an outer riverside suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Lytton had a population of 6 people.

Edward Picton "Ted" Mullighan, QC was an Australian judge who was known as an Indigenous rights advocate and protecting vulnerable people. He was known for his role as Commissioner of the Government of South Australia' Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry from 2004 to 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Somerton Park, South Australia</span> Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Somerton Park is a seaside suburb of Adelaide in South Australia. The mainly residential suburb is home to the Somerton Park Beach, Sacred Heart College and North Brighton Cemetery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Industrial school (Ireland)</span>

Industrial schools were established in Ireland under the Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act 1868 to care for "neglected, orphaned and abandoned children". By 1884, there were 5,049 children in such institutions throughout the country. The Act was superseded by the Children Act 1908.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Adelaide</span> Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

North Adelaide is a predominantly residential precinct and suburb of the City of Adelaide in South Australia, situated north of the River Torrens and within the Adelaide Park Lands. Laid out in a grid plan in three sections by Colonel William Light in 1837, the suburb contains many grand old mansions.

Francis Robert Burton was a Public Servant in the early days of South Australia and is remembered for his work in improving penal treatment of delinquent boys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Cocks</span> Australian police officer

Kate Cocks was a welfare worker and one of two of the state's first female police officers in South Australia. She is best known for her work with unmarried mothers and their babies. The Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home named after her in honor of her work.

Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre is a youth detention centre at two campuses in Cavan, an industrial northern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. It is operated by the Government of South Australia Department of Human Services, unlike adult prisons which are operated by the Department for Correctional Services. It is the only dedicated youth detention centre in South Australia.

Edward Francis Troy was a stained glass artist and decorative painter in Adelaide, South Australia, and a founder, in 1884, of the St Vincent de Paul Society in that State.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adelaide Destitute Asylum</span>

The Destitute Asylum was a government-funded institution in Adelaide in the colony of South Australia, designed to support those of its citizens who had no means of financial support, especially new arrivals and mothers with children. It was first established around 1839 as a Native School, with boarding facilities, for teaching local Aboriginal children, and functioned for some years in this capacity. As the school was not fully supported and therefore under-utilised, it started being used for young women arriving in the colony on their own, sometimes as orphans, and around 1850 became the Destitute Asylum. By 1855 it was holding both males and females, many of whom had been transferred for convalescence from the Adelaide Hospital.

The Westbrook Reformatory for Boys was a reformatory school in the town of Westbrook, in the Toowoomba Region, Queensland, in Australia. The Westbrook Reformatory was created in 1900 after the closure of earlier versions of the institution on the former prison hulk, the Proserpine, and at Lytton, Queensland. The Reformatory changed its name to the Westbrook Farm Home for Boys in 1919. Under this later name, it was the subject of a major scandal which culminated in a government inquiry. The institution was renamed twice more before its closure in 1994. Since its closure, the Westbrook institution has become known as a site of serious institutional abuse. It was described at length in the 1999 Forde Inquiry and the 2004 Forgotten Australians report.

Biloela Industrial School for Girls (1871–1887) was a 19th-century Australian girls' school, situated on Cockatoo Island, New South Wales. Although officially termed an industrial school, it was just as much a reformatory as those located at Coburg or Magill, with this difference, that those girls found in brothels and on the street were sent to Biloela, while criminal girls were committed to Shaftesbury Reformatory for Girls, while Coburg and Magill received both classes. The girls arrived in 1871, having been transferred from Newcastle Industrial School for Girls. In 1887, the girls were transferred once again, this time to more suitable buildings at Parramatta, that being the Parramatta Girls Industrial School.

References

  1. ↑ "Search results for 'Magill Reformatory School' and 'McNally Training Centre' with the following datasets selected – 'Suburbs and Localities' and 'Gazetteer'". Location SA Map Viewer. South Australian Government. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  2. ↑ "Glossary term: Industrial School (1866–1958)". Find & Connect. Retrieved 20 June 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Mullighan, E. P. (Edward Picton) (31 March 2008), Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry : allegations of sexual abuse and death from criminal conduct presented to the South Australian Parliament by the Hon. E.P. Mullighan QC, Commissioner, Children in State Care Commission of Enquiry (PDF), Adelaide, South Australia: Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry, ISBN   978-0-9805000-0-4 , retrieved 27 January 2018
  4. 1 2 "Magill Industrial School (1869–1898)". Find & Connect. Retrieved 20 June 2019.
  5. ↑ "Boys' Reformatory Hulk, Fitzjames (1880–1891)". Find & Connect. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 "Jervois Basin Ships' Graveyard Maritime Heritage Trail". Government of South Australia. Department for Environment and Water. Retrieved 22 November 2020. (See Fact sheet.)
  7. 1 2 3 4 "The Fitzjames: SA's floating prison for wayward teens". Adelaide Now. Retrieved 27 January 2018.[ dead link ]
  8. ↑ "The Hulk 'Fitzjames'". Adelaidia. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  9. ↑ "Girls' Reformatory, Edwardstown (1891–1898)". Find and Connect. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  10. 1 2 3 4 "Magill Training Centre (1993–2012)". Find and Connect.
  11. ↑ "Edwardstown Industrial School (1898–1949)". Find & Connect. Retrieved 20 June 2019.
  12. ↑ "McNally Training Centre (1967–1979)". Find and Connect. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  13. ↑ "Brookway Park (1965–1978)". Find and Connect. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  14. ↑ "South Australian Youth Training Centre (1979–1993)". Find and Connect.
  15. ↑ "Cavan Training Centre (1993–2012)". Find and Connect.
  16. ↑ "The News, 'Magill Reformatory re condemnatory statements by Mr Duncan Fraser'". The News. 20 February 1933.
  17. ↑ Walsh, Dave. "Life in Magill Youth Training Centre". Weekend Notes. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  18. 1 2 3 Haxton, Nance. "Calls for youth detention centre in South Australia to be demolished". ABC The World Today. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  19. ↑ Emmerson, Russell (5 September 2009). "Magill training centre worst of its kind". Adelaide Now. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  20. ↑ "Open letter demands Magill closure". ABC Online. 13 August 2009. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  21. ↑ Parnell, The Hon. Mark. (23 September 2009). "Magill Youth Training Facility". The Parliament of South Australia. South Australian Hansard of Legislative Council. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  22. ↑ Rann, The Hon. M.D. (23 September 2009). "MAGILL YOUTH TRAINING CENTRE". The Parliament of South Australia. South Australian Hansard of House of Assembly. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.