Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons are advised that this article contains the name of a deceased person

A new report into South Australia's only children's prison, Kurlana Tapa, should stop us all in our tracks. It revealed a 50 per cent increase in the use of isolation in 2024.

Children inside described the experience as being "punished like a dog and forgotten," locked in their rooms with no education, no exercise, and no human connection.

This is not a minor technical breach. It is the systematic use of solitary confinement against children, in direct violation of South Australian regulations, the state's own Charter of Rights for Youths Detained, and international human rights law. And it is happening right now, on our watch.

The Minister responsible insists these isolations are "brief" and "as comfortable as they can be." But there is nothing comfortable about being locked alone in a cell. For a child, 14 minutes of forced solitude can feel like a lifetime. Even "short" periods in solitary confinement have been shown to cause lasting psychological harm — trauma, depression, anxiety, and in some cases, suicidality. The United Nations has been clear: solitary confinement for children should be prohibited in all circumstances.

We do not have to look far to see the deadly consequences. In October 2023, Cleveland Dodd, a 16-year-old, died in custody in Unit 18 of Casuarina, Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Western Australia. An inquest into his death revealed that children detained there endured conditions of solitary confinement and were often kept in cells without running water.

Less than a year later, in 2024, another 17-year-old boy was killed in custody in the same facility. Two children dead within a year.

We know that solitary confinement kills Aboriginal children. Human Rights Watch has warned since 2020 that Western Australia's reliance on solitary, especially for children with disabilities, not only fails to provide adequate mental health support but actively increases the risk of self-injury and suicide.

Yet in South Australia, it is happening not only in children's prisons but across our schools. The logic of exclusion and containment stretches from classrooms to cell blocks.

The Pipeline of Exclusion

Often children who struggle in school are not being supported to thrive - they are being pushed out. Formal exclusions such as suspensions and expulsions are handed out in the name of discipline, but research shows they do not improve behaviour. Instead, they compound the very challenges that children are facing.

Researchers are unequivocal: "Formal exclusions from schools… are largely ineffective in managing challenging student behaviour, and can exacerbate, rather than resolve, existing problems."

The Graham Report into school exclusions in South Australia paints a damning picture.

Children in state placement (out of home care), who make up only 1.3 per cent of total government school enrolments, account for 8 per cent of "take homes," 5 per cent of suspensions, and 9 per cent of exclusions. They are 4.1 times more likely to be suspended and 6.7 times more likely to be excluded than their peers. Given the mass representation of Aboriginal children in state placement, these figures make plain the racial injustice baked into exclusionary discipline.

Students with disabilities are similarly targeted. In 2019, they made up 56.6 per cent of suspensions despite representing less than a third of the student population. Boys are suspended at three times the rate of girls

And the pattern is not one-off: a review of school exclusions in South Australia showed that the majority of suspensions (71.3 per cent) were given to students suspended two or more times. In other words, once a child is suspended, they are far more likely to be suspended again. This creates what advocates call a "suspension pipeline" – a revolving door that entrenches exclusion and increases the likelihood that a student will be permanently pushed out of school.

These are not random outcomes. They reflect entrenched structural inequality.

The very children who most need safe, inclusive, and well-resourced classrooms are instead those most frequently told they do not belong. And just like in children's prisons, exclusion is often disguised as care.

A suspension is framed as a "circuit breaker". An exclusion is justified as giving a child "time to reset". But what they all amount to is removal - pushing children out of community, out of belonging, and down a pipeline toward criminalisation and isolation.

"Regulation Walks" and the Illusion of Care

When schools default to removing the child from the classroom, instead of transforming classrooms to be inclusive and safe, "regulation walks" become yet another form of exclusion.

For some children, especially Aboriginal kids who already experience racism in classrooms, a "regulation walk" can become a near-permanent status, more time outside than in, more time removed than included.

The child is marked as "the problem" rather than the environment, the pedagogy, or the system.

This mirrors the same dangerous thinking in children's prisons: when staff are "overstretched" or a child is deemed "too difficult," the solution becomes containment. Lock them away, send them out, move the so called "problem child" rather than address the structural problem.

Containment as Colonial Logic

What ties solitary confinement in prisons to suspensions and regulation walks in schools is a deeper ideology: containment. From the missions and lock hospitals of colonial Australia to the prison cells and exclusion rooms of today, Aboriginal children in particular have been treated as subjects to be surveilled, regulated, controlled, removed, and warehoused.

Containment is not care. It is about preserving the smooth operation of the institution, not the wellbeing of the child.

When a child is locked in a cell or told to walk laps of the school oval, the school or prison becomes quieter and easier for staff to manage. The "disruption" is removed from view, the paperwork is tidied, and the institution appears calm and compliant. But nothing has been resolved for the child, their distress is only deepened, their needs left unmet. And the child pays the price: alienated, traumatised, and sequestered away, set adrift from community and belonging.

The pipeline from school exclusion to prison isolation is not metaphorical; it is material. Each suspension makes school failure more likely. Each exclusion builds alienation. And alienation is one of the strongest predictors of criminalisation.

Abolition Means Ending Exclusion

Some will argue that exclusions and isolations are necessary "tools" for managing difficult behaviour. But the evidence shows the opposite. Exclusion entrenches harm. Solitary confinement destroys children's mental health. If we are serious about safety, learning, and rehabilitation, these practices must end.

Abolitionist thinking demands that we dismantle not just prisons but every system that cages, excludes, and secludes children. Solitary confinement must be abolished. So too must suspensions and all forms of exclusions.

Instead, we must invest in practices that build connection and inclusion. Classrooms must be redesigned around the needs of children, especially those who are Aboriginal, disabled, or in state placement. That means trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally safe environments, and curricula that value children's identities instead of suppressing them. It means smaller class sizes, more support staff, and community-led decision-making.

In youth justice, abolition means closing prisons and replacing them with community-based supports that keep children safe, housed, and connected. No child should ever be locked alone in a cage. No child should ever be treated as disposable.

A Call to Reject Containment

The Kurlana Tapa report tells us plainly: children are being locked in solitary confinement in ways that are unlawful and harmful. But we cannot stop at condemning prisons. We must see the continuity between the child locked in a cell and the child sent home from school or told to walk the oval while their classmates learn.

All of these practices flow from the same logic of containment. They tell children, especially Aboriginal children, children in state placement, and children with disabilities, that their very presence is too much. That their needs are disruptions. That they must be removed.

We can no longer accept this as normal. South Australia must lead by ending isolation in children's prisons, abolishing school exclusions, and rejecting containment in all its forms. The solution is clear: care, inclusion, community, connection.

Because until we stop treating children as problems to be managed, we will keep seeing them punished, excluded, and forgotten - first in classrooms, then in prison cells. And we will keep hearing their words echo back to us: "punished like a dog and forgotten."

Tabitha Lean and Debbie Kilroy are members of The National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.