Doubtful test keeps kids in adult jails

A controversial wrist x-ray is used to determine if crew members are under 18. Photo / Thinkstock

Dozens of Indonesian children may be detained in adult prisons in Australia on people-smuggling charges because police have used a discredited test to determine their age, say lawyers and diplomats.

In contrast to the 14-year-old Australian detained in Bali on drugs charges - whose case has been widely reported and who has Australian diplomats working hard to secure his release - the plight of the young Indonesians wrongly incarcerated in Australia for up to 18 months has caused barely a stir.

Many are said to be barely literate, from poor villages and recruited as crew on boats they are told will be touring Indonesian islands.

On being picked up by the Australian Navy, they are taken into custody and, if deemed to be adults, face a mandatory five-year jail sentence under tough laws passed last year.

Crew members who say they are under 18 are given a wrist x-ray test that is banned in Britain and which the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons rejects as lacking a proper scientific basis.

The Australian courts have thrown out a number of cases where age was contested but many teenagers are still awaiting trial in maximum-security adult jails.

At least one is alleged to have been sexually assaulted.

The Indonesian Consulate-General in Sydney believes 50 of the people charged with people-smuggling and currently in custody are under-age.

Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor says there are 25 possible cases, while the Department of Foreign Affairs puts the number at 34.

Indonesia has now appointed an Australian barrister, Mark Plunkett, to investigate.

He said this week that most young crew members had no idea they were entering Australian waters or that it was a crime to help asylum-seekers travel to Australia by boat.

He called on Australian Federal Police to trace their parents in order to establish their ages. Few have birth certificates.

"Most of them have never been to school, they work on the seas around the islands of Indonesia," Plunkett told Radio Australia. "They are unwitting and guileless, and in many of the cases they are under 18 years of age."

A spokeswoman for O'Connor defended the wrist x-ray test, saying: "We are not aware of a better physical test." She said there was an incentive for adults to pretend they were minors and that people whose ages could not be established were given the benefit of the doubt and sent home.