Winlaton Youth Training Centre - Redundancy

Redundancy

When it was founded in 1956, Winlaton was promoted as a solution to female juvenile delinquency of all kinds: criminality, sexual promiscuity, homelessness or parental neglect. By the 1970s and 1980s, Winlaton, like other congregate institutions, was becoming peripheral to the philosophy of juvenile justice and welfare in Victoria; it became an anachronism. By the 1990s Winlaton was redundant and irrelevant to a new era of government policy compared with its pre-eminence in the 1950s when it was central to the then policies of institutionalised reform and protection of youth. At worst, it was seen as part of the problem of female juvenile justice in Victoria and protection rather than as the solution it was meant to be.

Given its primary function as a maximum security facility for youth offenders Winlaton was, by all accounts from former residents, a harsh place and, in keeping with the thinking of the day, was unmistakably institutional. Throughout its history experimental programmes were introduced. These ranged from the very fact that a specialist education based maximum security facility was in itself experimental in the 1950s to radical "triad" therapy (1980s. The Triad therapy was based on the theory of having a person with the problem, a person who had had the problem and a person that had never had the problem. other programs included the tattoo removal programme (1980s) and controversial trials of the contraceptive drug "depo-provera" on inmates in the 1980s. In the late 1980s-early 1990s the centre was renamed the "Nunawading Youth Residential Facility" and began accommodating boys aged 10 to 14 years.

The centre closed in 1993. Former residents have few formal avenues for recognition and there are no commercially published histories of the centre. It is hoped that in the future, former residents will tell their stories and enable others to better understand their experiences.