The Queensland government is unable to say when it will stop holding children in adult watch houses after it was revealed some were being kept for weeks at a time.
The ABC's Four Corners program has obtained hundreds of documents detailing cases of children enduring lengthy periods in adult holding cells because the state's youth detention centres are full.
"We have significant numbers of kids, from traumatised backgrounds, held like caged animals in concrete pens," Public Guardian Natalie Siegel-Brown told the ABC.
She cited one particularly alarming case where a girl was accidentally put in with two alleged male sex offenders.
Other files obtained by Four Corners reveal children as young as 10 have been held in watch houses, sometimes in isolation, sometimes in so-called suicide smocks.
Two children were held for 33 days or more.
One was an Aboriginal boy who had been deemed permanently unfit to plead and assessed as having the cognitive function of a child aged younger than six.
In another case, a girl was put into a pod with two alleged male sex offenders at the Brisbane City Watch House.
At the same watch house, a different girl was held 25 days, during which time she discovered she was about 11 weeks pregnant. She was later transferred to a youth detention centre.
Queensland's youth detention centres are full after state government reforms mandating that 17-year-olds be dealt with in the youth justice system, not the adult system.
This has resulted in children being held for long periods in adult watch houses because there's nowhere else for them to go.
Child Safety Minister Di Farmer says there's no doubt that adult watch houses are poor environments for young people but is unable to say when the practice will stop.
"I would hope by the second half of next year we can see that there are only kids in watch houses who are really just there as the general process of things," she told Four Corners.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says she doesn't want to see young people in detention.
"But unfortunately there are people out there that commit crimes, we're talking about burglary, we're talking about injuries to police officers, we're talking about sexual assaults," she said on Monday.
The Liberal National Party says the premier has failed to plan for the consequences of her own reforms, and and the Queensland Law Society wants the practice to end immediately.
"It is an absolute disgrace and simply outrageous to think that this practice was ever allowed to happen in the first place, let alone be considered an on-going way of detaining any young child," President Bill Potts said.
He says alternatives like properly staffed and supervised half-way houses or youth bail houses should be considered, and that figures around juvenile crime were indicative of wider community failings.
Last month, the Labor government said it would spend $150 million on a new 32-bed youth detention centre at Wacol, and $27 million on 16 more beds at the existing Brisbane Youth Detention Centre.
It's also funding diversion programs aimed at preventing youth crime.
