Any criminal justice system must keep the public safe by maintaining a “custodial option”, for example detention or jail, for offenders who remain undeterred or cannot be handled by other types of sentence.

This applies even to young people, though thankfully the numbers involved are much smaller – and Tasmania already has the necessary facility for them, in the shape of Ashley.

Yet it’s clear to me from listening to the Minister, Jacqui Petrusma, and questioning the relevant bureaucrats that the government is seemingly and wrongfully undermining Ashley and its dedicated staff.

Ashley’s role as a “last resort” puts it in the spotlight, so that staff are always under intense scrutiny even when threatened or attacked by inmates wielding broken window glass.

Staff had been complaining since the Perspex windows were replaced by glass, by the previous government as it believed the Perspex made Ashley look too much like a jail.

Now the Perspex is going back in – too late.

There has been a fundamental failure to grasp the need for security, without which no rehabilitation can take place.

Young offenders convicted of crimes such as murder, rape and armed robbery must be held in a secure facility.

Cases such as these require the strictest security, round the clock, every day of the year, as well as rehabilitation, education and indeed, care.

Few people would contest that.

Ms Petrusma herself agrees. She wrote in The Examiner on August 9: “A key component (of the government’s Youth At Risk Strategy) is the development of an options paper on future possibilities for custodial youth detention.”

In other words the government is considering what form detention will take, not whether it will be abolished altogether.

About Ashley, she said in her media release of August 16 that its “current design and environment ... does not support a contemporary model of youth justice”. Again this does not imply that there should be no detention at all.

But it does give her wriggle room to argue that the “design and environment” of Ashley are so bad they cannot be improved.

This argument is not credible. Tasmania already has a dedicated youth detention facility in Ashley.

Whether it houses 10 or 100 inmates is not relevant.

The fact that it currently houses fewer than 10 inmates highlights that it is a last resort, and that young offenders only get sent there, if there is no other sentencing option.

Even if it is not of the newest design, it cannot possibly be so badly laid out that it needs to be completely replaced by a brand-new multimillion-dollar facility.

Serious young offenders should be held in a secure facility, namely Ashley.

There should be no question of anything except keeping it right where it is, funding it properly, and further enhancing its security, its rehabilitation work, and diversionary programmes that keep young offenders out of it

Until then, all inmates should be humanely and professionally treated, and rehabilitated if possible. Is that really so hard?