Long time readers might be surprised by my response to the two articles today. It can be explained by my up bringing.
I was brought up in a disadvantaged household and alcoholic father and a battered mother. We lived in women shelters and all sorts in my early childhood i even spent time in state care.
It is a reason that drives my belief that we should create opportunity for all children no matter what their back ground. But I do not except and never will that children don't learn right and wrong even if your parents don't teach you, you know.

I'm pretty well over people making excuses for other peoples bad behavior. Every day you make a personal choice about how you choose to behavior.

This kid got the spit hood on him because he was spitting on people, if he wasn't doing ti then he wouldn't be wearing it. Now instead of asking the question what wrong with this kid, we see people asking whats wrong with the guards!

As I said anyone disturbed by the use of the spit hood can apply to become a guard (their always recruiting) and see how they go.

One last thing i'm sure there will be some mileage about his Aboriginality as well. All I'll say is tribal payback would be much harsher then White man's law so perhaps we should give that go.

There is nothing wrong with solitary confinement, its better to do this than to initiate other forms of behavioral reform. At least the individual wont' suffer physical harm from others. How long to put them in solitary confinement? I don't know, I'm no expert on human behavior, and psychologists are only half way there too.

Cobber:
Thoroughly traumatised kids will respond to continued cruelty, with behavioral problems that can only ever be exacerbated with more of the same! And I witnessed in the first person, far too much of this in the orphanages and foster homes of my formative childhood! Where routine daily whippings would only cease with preventative exhaustion!

Kids learn what they live and then pass on, unless moderated by inquisitorial intelligence and a better way?
Alan B.

Vocationally I've had a need to 'handle' some of these thirteen to eighteen years old youths, of both sexes, and I can tell you quite unequivocally how jolly hard some of them are, to both restrain and move/remove them, with a minimum amount of physical force. Weight of numbers alone, sometimes makes it even more difficult. Ideally, three would be the maximum in my opinion, in order to reduce any injury to the youth, or the staff charged with 'handling' him.

Spitting, kicking, punching, gouging, plus language of a kind, that's so bad it's capable of peeling paint, are quite typical behaviour with some of these 'kids'. I'm pretty big, and an ex professional pug, and it doesn't matter a fig when attempting to 'control' excessively violent children, with minimum force.

However, when a TV Programme is aired, showing youths being subjected to chemical agents, restrained to a chair, with a spitting mask fitted; it looks really dreadful, a throw back to the dark days of the late 1890's in London's infamous 'Bedlem' Lunatic Asylum. But what else can the authorities do ? After all they have a common law duty of care, to the young person. What about more and better training, opines STEELEREDUX, sure a good idea; but what type of training, and who has the 'uniquely specialised' skills to teach it ?

Anyway along comes this well intentioned academic, Mr Binoy KAMPARK of the RMIT (Melbourne) condemning as is his right, what he sees. But like all academics roundly condemns what's happening;...but offers NO bloody solution ! Anyone one of us can loudly condemn any situation, and that's all and good.

But what's the 'SOLUTION'; that's the most important issue of all ?

I reckon there's a million police and prison officers (many married with children) out there, who would really like to be told and taught a better way of dealing with these violent (young) individuals !

This unisolated event is not a problem to most Australians. It is an Aboriginal problem. Wayward children are a phenomena in developing countries, and in Brazil it is estimated that street urchins number between seven and eight million. (There), those children have the status of a cockroach, or a plague rat!
What this event really unearths is a mindset between first world thinking, and the third world living conditions of much of Aboriginal populations in Australia.
What the royal commission should be focused on, is the wasted money thrown at the perceived problem of Aboriginals living under third world conditions in Australia.
I think Alan B's perception of a solution is close to workable. It is a simple strategy to train children in a direction which improves their chances of success in a future adult life.
Where the issue lies, is the expectation that children growing up in third world conditions will actually recognise their own condition, and be desirous of adjusting to the offer to join White Mans first world concept of society! Won't happen, and why should it happen?
This event only highlights the failure of Aboriginal communities to grasp the problem. Obviously Aboriginas have lost the desire to respond to help offered, through Government funding, designed to improve their condition, and assist in the integration of their culture into the first world culture of fellow Australians.
They must recognise, and take responsibility for unacceptable law and order issues which are a direct result of their own actions. Recognise that antisocial behaviour will not be tolerated in the general community, and deal with their own issues. Learn to help themselves, in a nutshell!

The videos showed a complete lack of professionalism by the staff.

One video showed a staff member wearing thongs, and I don't know too many jobs where the worker is allowed to wear thongs.

This lack of professionalism indicates a lack of training and a lack of standards, and the results were the mistreatment of the children.

The videos also showed what a government can do to people, and if someone wants a country run by increasingly corrupt political parties that have no real connection to the public, they watch the videos.