This Isn't Another Report to Die in Your Downloads Folder

This is Isaiah's skeleton remembering surveillance cameras. This is fluorescent light at 120 Hz living between your molars and your amygdala. This is what happens when we stop intellectualising trauma and start feeling it in our bones.

Three rooms. 30 minutes. The entire truth about youth justice.

WHY THIS EXISTS

Because I'm Drowning in the Disconnect

Politicians tweet about youth crime from offices they'll never leave. Million-dollar reports written by people who've never heard institutional despair. Conferences where we intellectualise children trying not to die inside.

Meanwhile, Isaiah walks into Room 1 and his shoulders tell us more truth in three seconds than every policy paper ever written.

"I was just watching your face and you're like, 'What the f**?'"*

That's not shock. That's recognition. That's a body having a conversation with its past.

We built this container because understanding and KNOWING are different creatures entirely.

THE THREE ROOMS

Room 1: Brisbane's Reality

12 minutes of institutional truth

Steel bench because "timber could become a weapon." Everything bolted down because "hope gets dangerous when it's portable." Mesh windows that turn sunlight into something industrial and impossible.

Isaiah stood here and marked these walls. Not vandalism - archaeology in reverse. Proof that young people survive these spaces despite them, not because of them.

This room costs $2,355 per day. Per child. To manufacture trauma.

Room 2: What We Already Know Works

15 minutes of radical humanity

Sunset-coloured walls. Cordless phone. Family photos. Dignity made tangible.

Isaiah's assessment: "Massive difference."

That's it. That's the whole fucking report. One young man, two rooms, one word. Everything else is just expensive noise.

Room 3: Your Commitment

3 minutes to stop pretending you don't know

This is where you stop being a tourist in other people's trauma. Sign something. Fund something. Change something. Or admit you're comfortable with children being destroyed at $859,589 per year.

No exit without commitment. That's the deal.

WHO NEEDS TO WALK THROUGH

Politicians

Bring your tough-on-crime tweets. Leave with Isaiah's scratches under your fingernails.

Policymakers

Bring your evidence-based frameworks. Leave understanding that evidence has a nervous system.

Everyone Who Says "But What About the Victims?"

Isaiah WAS a victim. Then we made him one again, systematically, at taxpayer expense.

You

Because watching this through a screen isn't enough anymore.

THE ISAIAH PRINCIPLE

After years in rooms like Room 1, Isaiah said:

"I would prefer [people didn't] have to experience this to bring change."

He wishes the people funding torture chambers could understand without feeling even a fraction of what he endured. That's not forgiveness - that's humanity so profound it indicts the system more than any container could.

But his gentleness won't change policy. His wisdom won't shift budgets.

What might work is making you sit where he sat.

BUILT BY PEOPLE WHO ARE DONE TALKING

Benjamin Knight: The insomniac who follows paper trails to kids in cages
Nicholas Marchesi: Built these containers with his hands because revolution needs carpenters
Isaiah: Marked the walls so you can't pretend you don't know
Young Architects: Who survived the system and now design its replacement

This is our middle finger to every conference that pontificates about "trauma-informed care" while children scratch their names into walls just to prove they exist.

The Blog Post: "Isaiah Marked These Walls"

I'm done with the conferences. Done with the PowerPoints about "evidence-based practice" and "therapeutic frameworks" and whatever other language we use to avoid saying: we're torturing children and charging $859,589 per year for the privilege.

I built a shipping container because I needed something real. Three rooms that show the distance between destruction and dignity. Not another report. Not another pilot program. Just steel and fluorescent lights and the truth that lives in Isaiah's bones.

When Isaiah Walked In

His shoulders shifted first - that specific contraction of someone whose spine remembers surveillance like a second skeleton. The fluorescent hit him at 120 Hz, that frequency that lives between your molars and your amygdala, and his eyes started darting: "Dart to dart. The eyes are darting all down."

Three years out of detention. Doesn't matter. His body remembers everything.

Someone watched his face change and said: "You're like, 'What the f**?'"*

But Isaiah wasn't surprised. He was home. Not the good kind of home - the kind that's written into your nervous system, the kind you can't forget even when you're free.

The Archaeology of Truth

Isaiah picked up something sharp and started scratching the walls.

"Do it. Get some rocks," someone said.

This wasn't vandalism. This was documentation. Every scratch both wound and suture, proof and promise. The sound filled the container - that specific scraping every detention survivor knows, the soundtrack to carving your existence into surfaces designed to forget you.

He knows why the bench is steel: "If it was timber, you could jump on it and make a weapon."

He knows why everything's bolted: "Hope gets dangerous when it's portable."

These aren't design choices. They're philosophical statements about which children deserve futures and which deserve warehousing.

Room 2 Changed Everything

The Spanish model. Sunset walls. Cordless phone (CORDLESS - imagine trusting a teenager). Family photos.

Isaiah's assessment: "Massive."

One word. That's the entire finding. That's what a million-dollar evaluation would conclude if it had the balls to be honest: treating kids like humans works better than treating them like hazardous waste.

Revolutionary.

The Heartbreak

Here's what destroyed me: After everything, Isaiah looked at this container designed to give politicians just 10 minutes of his years of hell, and said:

"I would prefer [people didn't] have to experience this to bring change."

This young man who survived systematic dehumanisation wishes his torturers could understand without having to feel what he felt. His humanity is so vast it makes the system look even smaller.

Why This Matters

All those conferences where intelligent people with degrees discuss "best practice" while never asking Isaiah what would have actually helped. All those politicians who tweet about youth crime between champagne functions. All those reports that die in downloads folders while kids die in detention.

The container is my response to all of that. It's Isaiah's scratches made manifest. It's the difference between reading about drowning and water filling your lungs.

Isaiah marked these walls. Now politicians will touch them. Feel them. Stand where he stood.

And maybe - just fucking maybe - they'll understand that every scratch is a young person saying:

I was here.
I survived.
Despite you, not because of you.
Now listen to what would have actually helped.

The Call

We open October 22nd. Sydney.

You'll sit where Isaiah sat. Feel what he felt. For just 10 minutes of his years.

Then you'll walk into Room 2 and understand that we choose this violence. We fund this failure. We could have dignity and cordless phones and futures, but we choose steel benches and mesh windows and children who learn to sleep listening for footsteps.

Room 3 is where you commit to something real. Or don't come.

This isn't about feeling bad. This isn't about guilt. This is about Isaiah working at Interlace Advisory now, helping young people who recognise him immediately - "You've been in trouble" - because authenticity doesn't need certification.

This is about the fact that we know what works. We've known forever. We just choose not to do it because fear wins elections and healing doesn't photograph well.

The container is waiting. Isaiah's marks are on the walls.

The question isn't whether you'll feel uncomfortable.

The question is whether you'll do anything about it.

[Book your 30 minutes with truth]

[Or keep pretending you don't know]

#CONTAINED #IsaiahsTruth #NoMoreConferences #SystemChange

Share this if you're done watching children being destroyed for profit while we pretend it's justice.