The state government has engaged an ACT consultancy firm to develop a design brief for Tasmania's new youth justice centres, which are set to replace the troubled Ashley Youth Detention Centre.
The firm Noetic Group will provide a report detailing what the youth justice therapeutic centres should include, while the state government is conducting a review of Crown-owned sites that may be suitable for the new facilities.
Prisoners Legal Service Tasmania chair Greg Barns SC said the new sites should be in urban centres and close to public transport.
He suggested that the new Tasmanian justice model should look at the Back Track program for inspiration, which was adopted in 2006 inArmidale, New South Wales.
"It is a very good model...when you go there it has lots of trees, open facilities in terms of housing, it has workshops for art, it has a warm and embracing feel. It feels nothing like an institution and that is the idea. ," Mr Barns said.
"We ought to be getting in architects and designers who understand how to create such envrionments."
There can be no razor wire, no big fences, we have to move away from these primitive tools of containment...don't put it out in the middle of a paddock somewhere in an industrial estate.
- Prisoners Legal Service chair Greg Barns
Education, Children and Youth Minister Roger Jaensch said education will be an important part of the government's youth justice reforms, linking young people with long-term education, vocation and other supports to help youth transition back into the community.
"The transition plan for reforming the Youth Justice System is well underway with Noetic Group engaged to develop a detailed brief for the new facilities, which will determine the most appropriate settings for a secure and therapeutic environment," he said.
"A review of Crown-owned sites that may be suitable for the new facilities is also being conducted, and preferred sites will be identified once Noetic Group's brief has been finalised, with the planning and consultation process to follow."
Mr Barns said the new Tasmanian centres could enhance and improve the lives of really vulnerable people, and should be suitable for nurturing and rehabilitation.
"If the government wants its rhetoric to meet reality it will have to, and it should embrace, a completely new approach. Whatever these new centres looks like they have to be a million miles away from the detention models that we are so used to in Australia, which have failed us badly," Mr Barns said.
"There can be no razor wire, no big fences, we have to move away from these primitive tools of containment...In other words, don't put it out in the middle of a paddock somewhere in an industrial estate."
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