In an address to the National Press Club in Canberra, Anne Hollonds made the case for earlier intervention to help save children from “disadvantage, despair and desperation”.

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“Youth detention centres are the places where the most egregious breaches of the human rights of children are happening,” she said on Wednesday.

Australia cannot continue with “business as usual” and should ditch its failed approach of longer sentencing, more policing and more children’s prisons, she said.

Instead, it should look to change youth justice to improve child wellbeing.

“After the child protection system, often the next station on the train line for them is the criminal justice system,” she said.

What she saw during visits to the nation’s youth detention centres left the commissioner “shocked and distressed”.

“What was most chilling for me was to meet children who had no-one, who were completely alone, who spoke of feeling shut out and shunned by society,” the commissioner said.

“These children were unable to tell me about any hopes or dreams or plans for the future. All they could see in their future was more of the same but in adult prison.

“Barely literate, their lack of education or training gave them no prospects for a job, and they had no-one to help them.

“The light had gone out of their eyes.”

The commissioner warned unless the nation started paying attention to the evidence, the community would be having the same conversation in a decade’s time, only with a lot more tragedies along the way.

The children themselves were victims of crime but because their story was rarely heard, it was easy to demonise and dehumanise them.

“Australia can be ‘smart on crime’ by acting on the evidence, dealing with the barriers to reform, and building safe communities where children can get the best start in life,” she said.

By Tess Ikonomou IKONOMOU, AAP