Many of the boys involved have reportedly been left traumatised and have told of enduring horrific conditions and punishments, including solitary confinement.
In 2014, six boys were tear-gassed at close range in a Darwin juvenile-detention centre.
A video of the incident, obtained by the ABC, depicts a horrific picture of life inside the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.
A riot allegedly had broken out in the isolation unit at the time, where six boys were being kept in a tiny room.
The boys were then gassed for eight minutes, restrained, taken outside and sprayed with cold water.
A group of lawyers helped uncover what allegedly was happening at the facility after a tour of the place.
One of those lawyers, Priscilla Collins, says she noticed boys were being kept in isolation.
"So we actually went into the Don Dale centre just for a meeting, and then we were taken on a tour. They took us into this room, and it was just brick walls, no light, no air conditioning. And you could hear sounds, and I said, well, 'Are there people in there?' And they said, 'Yeah, they're the youths.' And I was really shocked, because it was so claustrophobic in there, it was hot, there was no light ... the facilities were just not suitable."
Ms Collins says the poor facilities are the result of a department not coping and a government not doing enough to help fund it.
"At the moment, 70 per cent of the juveniles that are in there are on remand, so they haven't actually been sentenced to the juvenile-detention centre. So the other 30 per cent that have been sentenced ... you know, not all of them are serious offenders. So you've only got, really, a small cohort of youth that need to be in there. And, unfortunately, the department has to work within the resources and funding that they've got, so their hands are tied. So it's really time that the actual government takes responsibility and provides adequate funding, because this is an essential service."
At the time of the alleged riot, the Northern Territory government praised the guards and said they had acted appropriately.
But former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma says there is cause for concern.
"To think that, in today's modern society, that we have, a, centres like the Don Dale centre that's able to put people in solitary confinement, and then to treat them the way that they were treated, unfortunately, around the nation, we don't see enough effort being put into the prisons to be able to prepare people for their release."
Neither the Northern Territory government nor the Opposition would comment.
