The horrific footage of a 14-year-old First Nations girl with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder being kept in an adult watchhouse in Cairns has seen rising criticism of the Queensland government's decision to keep children in places designed to house adult offenders.

A joint Guardian Australia/SBS' The Feed investigation revealed footage of Sam (not her real name), who has been assessed as having the mental capacity of a kindergarten child, being handcuffed, naked, and covered in her own urine, in a Queensland adult watchhouse.

She is one of many severely intellectually disabled children - many of whom are Indigenous - branded as young repeat offenders and being locked up in adult watch houses.

Amnesty International Indigenous Rights campaigner Kacey Teerman said the Queensland government was "knowingly perpetrating child abuse on an industrial scale" by locking children in facilities designed for adults.

"In the coming days we'll probably hear Premier Stephen Miles and Minister Mark Ryan line up to say how they're shocked by the footage of kids being brutalised in watchhouses. How can they even pretend to be shocked?" the Gomeroi woman said on Thursday.

"They created this system of child abuse and continue to defend it."

Also on Thursday, the Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS) and the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak (QATSICPP) urged the government to stop housing children in watchhouses, with QATSICPP chief executive Garth Morgan describing the vision as "horrifying".

"It is absolutely shocking to have witnessed this vision of 'Sam', a young girl with an intellectual disability being forcibly restrained by Queensland Police in an adult watch house," Mr Morgan said.

"This was clearly about the adults in the situation not being able to regulate their own behaviour, and this is unbecoming for an officer of the law in Queensland."

Vision showed Sam having her hand slammed into a prison cell door and Mr Morgan said the violence, and the way she was spoken to afterwards, was the "worst kind of gaslighting and coercion".

"This incident gives rise to a much more serious concern about the capacity of the QPS to train their officers adequately. It is clear that police are not trained to work with children, particularly those who have impaired cognitive function," Mr Morgan said.

Footage from 2023 shows her crying and begging not to be kept in the adult facility, with QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh noting: "The child's cries for help are heartbreaking. You can hear the terror and pain in her voice."

"Queenslanders know children do not belong in adult watchhouses, and this harrowing vision proves it," she said.

As the Queensland government has been attacked by the opposition for supposedly being soft on crime - despite little to no evidence of this being the case - they have reacted with several decisions that have alarmed human rights, medical and Indigenous groups.

Last year the Labor government twice suspend the Human Rights Act - to allow the children to be housed in adult watch houses and criminalise children for breaches of bail - and this year announced they would remove detention as a last resort for children — a principle in the United Nations' convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia has signed and ratified.

"Queensland Labor knows that detained children in their care suffer extraordinary human rights violations," Ms Teerman said.

"Last year, the government suspended the state's Human Rights Act so that it could continue to perpetrate human rights abuses against these kids, who are overwhelmingly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander."

National Indigenous Times reported earlier this year of two severely intellectually disabled Aboriginal children died in the immediate aftermath of leaving youth detention, where they were kept in separation (the government's term for solitary confinement) for a combined 600 days.

On an average day in 2022-23 in Queensland, 310 children were in detention — 70 per cent of them Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. A recent report found all three of the state's youth detention centres in 2022-23 were operating over their safe capacity by an average of 23 young offenders each day.

Various people have expressed their horror to National Indigenous Times at the way the state has moved towards permanently damaging children at the behest of populism

"Politicians must stop thinking about winning votes and political point scoring. We need politicians who act on evidence without abandoning their humanity," Ms McVeigh said.

"The ongoing abuse and poor treatment of children in watch houses is likely to increase children's offending behaviour and will ultimately make Queenslanders less safe."

Justice Reform Initiative Executive Director Dr Mindy Sotiri said the Queensland government can't ignore the mounting evidence that children are being mistreated in watch houses.

"The government has cited the need to keep the community safe as the basis for locking children up, but there's overwhelming evidence that shows holding children in inhumane conditions will traumatise them and entrench behaviour that makes future offending much more likely," she said.

"Queensland urgently needs to reverse its thinking and instead take an evidence-based approach to protect children and keep the community safe. This means stopping the harmful practice of using adult police watch-houses to lock up children."

With all these organisations warning the government for years over the mistreatment of people in detention - especially children with disabilities - and no improvements made, it seems unlikely changes will be forthcoming, especially with the LNP opposition vowing to incarcerate more children if they are elected.

As Katherine Hayes from the Youth Advocacy Centre told National Indigenous Times: "It's as if no one cares."