It’s generally assumed from all the television series and documentaries we’ve seen that prison guards normally treat their prisoners like absolute garbage, but you would like to think that they draw the line at torture.

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Turns out that this isn’t true everywhere though, as an ABC documentary ‘Four Corners’ exposed juvenile detention guards in Australia’s Northern Territories treating their prisoners with nothing but complete and utter disdain, with their actions evoking comparisons to America’s treatment of its inmates in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The footage showed them shackling, hooding, taunting, and teargassing detained children and leaving them in solitary confinement for extended periods of time.

Here’s one segment that particularly got people upset:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9hLKWgVow&feature=player_embedded

The kid in the video above – 17 year old Dylan Voller – is now suing the government of the Northern Territories along with five other detainees. Australia itself has been outraged by the footage with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promising to launch an inquiry into the footage.

Many critics have been quick to condemn the footage shown in ‘Four Corners’, a ruing that many in positions of power must have known that such abuses were going on for some time. The videos were taken from 2010-2015 – five whole years – leading many to claim that there is a ‘culture of cover up’ within the government. It’s also pointed out that the guards knew that they were on camera for these instances, so just imagine what they got up to when there wasn’t anyone watching them – it doesn’t really bear thinking about.

I would like to think that this footage might mean that something would be done about reforming prisons, but I honestly doubt it considering how long it seems to have been a problem in my lifetime.

For more prison horror stories, check out the bleak truth behind Russia’s toughest prison. Makes this place look like a cakewalk.