The Zak Grieve case illustrates how the combination of mandatory sentencing and the laws of complicity cause unequal justice and put young offenders at risk.
Zak Grieve was eighteen years old when he found himself involved in a serious crime where
four men planned and carried out the killing of a man in 2011. The body was taken to a campsite outside Katherine, where it was found the next morning. Grieve had been involved in the planning but was at home asleep when the murder was committed. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to the mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of twenty years; the heaviest of all of those convicted, while he had been the only one of the four to abandon the murder plan. This was caused by a problem within
the law, the combination of the laws of complicity and mandatory sentencing. This complex area of law will be explained further in the blog “Problems within the law.
The Dylan Voller Case
Dylan Voller, a Ngarrenjerri man, was born in 1997. He is a perfect example of one of the young people that roam the streets of Alice Springs, although he was luckier than
many because he had a home to go back to. He grew up in Alice Springs, where his behavioural problems soon became apparent. He broke the arm of another child in
preschool and was expelled from five schools due to his issues and his refusal to take Ritalin because it made him nauseous.
Dylan’s mother tried to get help for her son’s behavioural issues on numerous occasions. When the boy broke her window, at age eleven, she was told that if she reported the incident to the police, Dylan would get the help he needed. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Once in custody, Dylan did not receive any significant mental health interventions; instead he was the subject of a long list of further traumatising transgressions
that shocked the whole nation when they were revealed in the Four Corners episode Australia’s Shame.
The following timeline is constructed from Voller’s testimony before the Royal Commission. Where other sources have been used, this is indicated.
In October 2010, thirteen-year-old Dylan was held up by his neck against a wall and thrown into a cell in the behavioural management unit at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. The officer was charged but found not guilty of assault. He was a casual employee, and his
contract was not renewed.
In December of that same year, Dylan was being held in isolation after threatening self-harm. He was grabbed by the neck, thrown onto a mattress, and forcibly stripped
naked. The officer involved was found not guilty of aggravated assault.
In April 2011, Dylan was on the phone while in prison. When he refused to hand the phone over, a guard took it off him, kneed him and knocked him to the ground. The officer was found not guilty of assault. His casual contract was not renewed but he was later re-employed at the Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre, despite objections from the Professional Standards Command.
In October of that year, Dylan was being held in isolation after threatening self-harm. Three officers entered the room, one of them grabbed him by the neck, stripped him naked and left him crying in his hands on the floor.
In August 2014, an angry guard threw a pear at Dylan and attempted to block the security camera by throwing wet toilet paper at it. He then told Dylan he planned to harm him on the outside.
That same month, Dylan was one of the six children who were tear-gassed in the Don Dale isolation unit after another child caused problems. The boys had been held in isolation in the Behaviour Management Unit. In 2021, following a class action, the six children who were gassed and 1200 other ill-treated children received compensation for the tear-gassing incident.
During 2014, Dylan was involved in more than 200 prison incidents of self-harm, assault on staff and others (some requiring hospitalisation) since he was jailed for aggravated
robbery and endangering a police officer.
In March 2015, Dylan was transferred to the Alice Springs adult prison and strapped into a restraining chair for almost two hours. The use of mechanical restraints on children was legalised in the Northern Territory in 2016.
In July 2016, footage of Dylan shackled to the restraining chair and wearing a spit hood was featured on the ABC TV program “Four Corners” episode Australia's Shame.
In December of that year, Dylan gave evidence at the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory.
Dylan was released early from prison in February 2016 and began campaigning immediately for improved conditions for youth in detention. In the same year, Dylan’s confidential files were found at the Alice Springs rubbish tip.
In 2019, the now 21-year-old Dylan pleaded guilty to staging a bomb hoax at the Commonwealth Games marathon in Gold Coast.
In February 2020, Dylan was sentenced to a 10-month prison sentence over an incident in which he jumped onto railway tracks, exposed his penis and assaulted a transit
guard in Western Australia. A warrant for his arrest was issued in NSW on 19 June 2020 in relation to an armed robbery in Moama, New South Wales in May 2019.
In September 2021, The High Court found that media outlets were responsible for Facebook comments in a defamation case that was pursued by Dylan Voller. The defamation case centres on comments made by third parties on Facebook in response to news articles. The
High Court ruled that media outlets were considered the publishers of the comments and were therefore responsible for any defamatory content.
Although Voller has apologised for his behaviour in a letter and has thanked the community for supporting him, he was told by his sentencing judge that he had to “stop blaming others” for his misfortunes. Moreover, a Northern Territory Supreme Court judge has questioned his culpability for his “onerous” treatment in jail, arguing that Voller’s own behaviour may have provoked the incidents he says caused him trauma.
Former Federal MP Natasha Griggs said after the Royal Commission hearings that:
“the public should stop treating Voller like a martyr”. Voller is now a married man with children and is doing his best to get the help he needs. Drugs remain a problem
for him. He has indicated that the youth workers at Bush Mob in Alice Springs were a great help for him. The fact that he was charged with violence against his partner in April 2022 indicates that he is still struggling. The fact that he is now a national icon does not make things easier for him.
In June 2022 he was found in the possession of marijuana. He acted aggressively when the police entered the room that he was in. Dylan held a pair of scissors to his neck and
said: “Come on, shoot me.”
The 2016 Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory was created because of the exposure of the treatment of Dylan Voller to investigate how children were treated by the welfare system and in detention centres in the Northern
Territory. It released its concluding report in 2017.
It was noted on the first day of the Commission’s hearings that there had already been many reports, reviews, and inquiries into the matters the Commission was asked to investigate and there had been little improvement. The Commission was determined not to be ‘just another inquiry’ that fails to lead to positive and long-lasting change for the community and the children and young people of the Northern Territory. It was to find out whether, in the treatment of children in youth detention centres in the Northern Territory, the law was broken and rules were not followed, and whether policies, procedures and systems were in place to prevent children from being treated badly.
The report found “shocking and systemic failures” over many years that were known yet ignored. It found that youth detention centres were not fit for accommodating, let alone for rehabilitating children and young people.
Children were subject to verbal abuse, physical control, and humiliation, being denied water, food, and the use of toilets. Children were dared or bribed to carry out degrading
and humiliating acts or to commit acts of violence against each other. Prison staff restrained children using force to their head and neck areas. The use of ‘ground stabilising’
tactics meant that children were thrown to the ground and sat on. Isolation was used inappropriately, punitively, and inconsistently with the Youth Justice Act and caused very
likely lasting trauma. The report recommended the closing Don Dale’s Youth Detention Centre; raising the age of criminal responsibility to 12, and only allowing children
under 14 years of age to be detained for serious crimes; a paradigm shift in youth justice to increase diversion and therapeutic approaches. It also recommended developing a new model of bail and secure detention accommodation and increasing engagement with Aboriginal Organisations.
Six years after the recommendations, only the last shows any signs of being implemented.* At the time of this writing (2022), solicitor John Lawrence is standing every Friday in front of the Don Dale facility (which is in the former condemned Berrimah adult high-security prison)
in protest of the treatment of his young clients who have severe mental health issues and who are locked up in a cage-like cell for 22 hours a day.
* The age of criminal responsibility has been raised to 12 in 2023.
Photo: Docubay
Photo ABC News
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