Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre

The Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre, at Windsor, was formerly known as the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Centre. A government-run facility, it operated under its new name as a remand centre until 2001, when it closed.

The Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions (1998-1999) examined conditions at the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre, and its predecessors. The 1999 report concluded:

Historically, Wilson and the children in it suffered from a power struggle between the Departments of Health and Children’s Services, in which the obstinate insistence of the Senior Medical Director that the psychiatric approach must be universally applied prevailed for many years … The consequences of that situation for the children were an utter neglect of their educational entitlements; a damaging and alienating insensitivity to their needs (particularly reflected in the admission, sedation and seclusion procedures), an exposure of the children to the risk of physical and sexual abuse (given the absence of training and supervision of the orderlies employed), and the unnecessary stigmatisation of children as criminal and psychiatric cases.

In the post-1983 handover period, the problems of Wilson have largely centred around the complete inadequacy of the building itself, with all that this entails for the conditions in which children live there; the lack of proper staff training and the risks of abuse posed by that deficiency; and the insufficiency of the services, programs and education provided. … it is worth commenting here that they are problems that have existed at Wilson for many years without redress. Many remain to this day (p.162).