Juvenile detention in the Northern Territory

Juvenile detention in the Northern Territory is administered by the Department of Correctional Services of the Government of the Northern Territory. Juvenile detention is mostly operated through two facilities - the Alice Springs Juvenile Holding Centre in Alice Springs, and the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in eastern Darwin. A juvenile is a child between the age of 10 and 17.

The Northern Territory, as of June 2015, has a juvenile detention rate of 16.7 per 100,000 people; the highest of Australia's states and territories. A report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in April 2016 showed that in 2014-15 of a national total of 900 juveniles in detention on an average day, 41 were in detention in the Northern Territory. However, in terms of incarceration rates, the Northern Territory overwhelmingly had the highest rate of juveniles in detention of any state or territory. It detained 15.6 in every 10,000 children of that age on an average day. Western Australia had the next-highest rate at 6.1 children detained, while Victoria had the lowest at 1.5.

The juvenile detention system is currently the subject of the Royal Commission into Juvenile Detention in the Northern Territory, established by Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull on 28 July 2016, following the broadcast of the Four Corners episode "Australia's Shame", which highlighted the abuse of child in the system.

A system of criminal punishment for minors had existed in the Northern Territory since the territory's establishment in 1911. Historically, juvenile detention systems operated in the area of Northern Territory as early as settlement in the early 1860s, when the area was in control of the colony of New South Wales and shortly before control of the territory was handed over to South Australia.

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