The prison staffer who found an Indigenous teen with self-inflicted harm in the youth wing of an adult prison says the unit “was set up to fail”.

April 5, 2024

The corrections worker who found the first juvenile to die in WA youth detention after he self-harmed says the prison unit where the incident happened “was set up to fail”.

Youth custodial officer Daniel Torrijos discovered Cleveland Dodd unresponsive inside his cell in a troubled youth wing of a high-security adult prison in the early hours of October 12, 2023.

The 16-year-old had made eight threats to self-harm in the hours before Mr Torrijos unlocked his cell door in Unit 18 in Perth’s Casuarina Prison.

Staff fought to save his life before paramedics arrived and transported him to hospital, where he died surrounded by his family on October 19.

Mr Torrijos told an inquest on Friday that the prison wasn’t prepared for the boys when the unit opened in 2022, and a lot of his colleagues didn’t want to work there because they knew it was “chaos” at the facility.

“It was set up to fail and that’s how it was perceived by a lot of officers,” he said.

“Everyone didn’t feel that positive that it was going to be successful at Unit 18.”

Mr Torrijos said many of the boys sent to the unit were in “destructive mode” and had been involved in major incidents at Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre before they were transferred to the unit.

“They went in and the place was destroyed,” he said.

“It was set up for adult prisoners, it wasn’t set up for kids who had been wrecking their cells.”

The youth custodial officer, who has 10 years’ experience, painted a bleak picture of WA’s youth justice system including staff assaults, rolling lockdowns due to staff shortages, riots and escape attempts.

Cleveland’s death sparked outrage and grief in the community. It also triggered an expedited coronial inquest, the first of its kind in WA, to examine the policies and procedures at Unit 18 and Cleveland’s treatment.

Counsel assisting the coroner Anthony Crocker told the inquest during his opening on Wednesday that Cleveland’s death “by apparent suicide” was an “immense tragedy”.

“That this death, the death of a child, occurred … on the grounds of a maximum-security adult male prison, begs the question – how could such a thing happen?” he said.

The court heard Cleveland had been locked in his cell, which had no running water, for most of the day before he self-harmed.

He was frustrated with the length of time he had been in custody, and had earlier in the day learned he had been denied bail and would remain behind bars.

Cleveland had covered a CCTV camera in his cell with tissue paper, blocking the view of correctional staff monitoring him, but they didn’t bother to uncover it until they were fighting to save his life.

He made calls asking for medical treatment and water as the night wore on, but the officers working that night were reluctant to open detainees’ cell doors “due to staffing numbers and risk issues”.

Mr Crocker told the inquest Cleveland had been in detention since August 2022 and had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder, a cannabis use disorder and a likely language disorder.

A neuropsychologist said his behaviour could have been caused by early life trauma, language difficulties, exposure to family and domestic violence, drug use and poor supervision.

A mental health worker at the facility said Cleveland was “oppositional defiant” and “extremely violent and aggressive … He needs to be at Unit 18”.