Minister for Children Katherine Zappone 
The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice has called on the Government to create a new facility specifically and exclusively to detain young adults in order to ensure their humane treatment.
A report launched on Tuesday, ‘Developing Inside: Transforming Prison for Young Adults’, recommends that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, be assigned responsibility for 18–24 year olds in the criminal justice system, and that the number of young adults in prison should be halved and accommodated separately to older prisoners.
The report found that while representing 12% of the adult population nationally, 18–24 year olds make up 24% of all those sent to prison each year and 75 young adults were on 21 hours lock-up.
