In this op-ed, Zenith Australia chief executive Jason Tonelli reflects on about why the number 10 has a deeply personal connection after spending a night in prison.
This month, my eldest son turns ten.
In most of this country, ten is also the age at which a child can be charged for a crime and locked in a cell.
I have been sitting with that reality since last week, when I handed over my phone and my watch, put on a prison uniform, and spent the night at the former Yasmar Youth Detention Centre in Sydney.
The stark difference is I did it by choice, alongside around 80 others from our industry, as part of UnLtd’s Adland Bail Out.
We were searched and fingerprinted. We lost the right to decide when we ate, when we slept, or where we stood.
We were all strikingly aware that none of it was real in the way it is for the children who live there. We knew we would walk out in the morning, and we had each raised $1,500 in bail to do so. Yet the loss of autonomy landed harder and faster than I expected. Within hours, a room of confident, senior people grew quiet, smaller, less sure of themselves.
Then I thought about my son. About a boy his age, his size, going through a version of that night with no end date and no one raising his bail. It is not an easy thing to picture, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
What stayed with me most, though, was something more hopeful. We were shown that there are better ways to respond to a child who has gone off course. That the behaviour can be turned around, and that the long-term outcomes of locking up a ten-year-old are almost always worse than the alternatives. The evidence is plain: early contact with the system tends to produce more time within it, not less. The cycle is real, and it can be broken.
For one night, an industry that competes hard every other day of the year set all of that aside and stood together for children most of us will never meet. That is rare, and it deserves to be acknowledged. I have long believed our reach, our resources and our creativity could shift outcomes that have nothing to do with a campaign. Last week I saw it.
To everyone who contributed to my bail and to others’ — thank you. Together we raised meaningful funds for UnLtd’s work to break the cycle of youth incarceration. A further thank you to the UnLtd team, and to the former participants who came back as guards to run the night.
The cell door opened for me at sunrise. This month, I will watch my son turn ten in a house full of noise and cake and freedom. Every child deserves a shot at the same.
The work does not stop when the bail is paid. If you would like to help, please donate to UnLtd’s Adland Bail Out. Every contribution goes directly to programs that keep children out of detention and give them a different path.
