What can I complain about?
You can complain about unfair treatment (discrimination), sexual harassment, or unreasonable limitations on your human rights while in detention.
- Discrimination happens when someone treats you unfairly because of things like your race, sexuality, disability, religion, or age.
- Sexual harassment happens when someone does something to you that is sexual and makes you feel upset, embarrassed, or afraid, like touching or saying sexual things to you.
- Human rights limitations includes things like not having your dignity respected, not being allowed to stay connected with family, or not getting medical attention.
We prioritise complaints that are urgent. Urgent means it needs immediate action. For example, if you are at risk of immediate or significant harm.
Find out about the types of complaints the Commission can deal with.
Step 1: Complain to the detention centre
First you should make a complaint to the detention centre. This gives the detention centre a chance to fix the problem.
If your complaint is about unfair treatment (discrimination) or sexual harassment you don’t need to complain to the detention centre before making a complaint to the Commission (go to Step 2). However, complaining to the detention centre first may help to have your complaint dealt with at an early stage, and may help avoid delays if you make a complaint to the Commission later.
You can make a complaint yourself by speaking to someone who works at the detention centre or by speaking to the community visitor.
If you can, write down what happened. You should also write down who you spoke to about it, and when you spoke to them (the date).
A parent, carer, or friend can also make a complaint for you.
Step 2: Complain to the Commission
Once you have given your complaint to the detention centre, send your complaint to us (tell us what happened).
In some cases, we will need to allow the detention centre time to fix the problem before we can try to resolve it. If this is the case, we will talk to you about it once we receive your complaint.
The complaint can be:
- posted to the Queensland Human Rights Commission, PO Box 15565, City East Q 4002.
- emailed to: enquiries@qhrc.qld.gov.au, or
- lodged with the Commission online
What we will do
We will look at your complaint to see if it is something we can help with.
The complaints process can take some time and we can’t solve everything. But we will listen to you and your supporters and do our best to help find a solution.
What we cannot do
We cannot accept human rights complaints about:
- how long a child is detained in a police watch house
- decisions to transfer children between police watchhouses (after 1 September 2023).
We can accept complaints about discrimination in relation to the above matters.