Victoria is on track to become the first Australian state to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12, as the Allan government introduced the Youth Justice Bill 2024 to Parliament last week.

Under the proposed legislation, Victorian police officers will not be allowed to arrest or charge a child aged 10 or 11 with a crime or detain them. However, they can transport children to a safe place and into the care of a responsible adult.

The state government acknowledged that the proposed bill might not be implemented within the current year as initially pledged when the government committed to the policy in 2023. However, the minister anticipates that implementation may occur in early 2025.

The Victorian government argued that lifting the age of criminal responsibility through this new law was necessary: “Experience also shows that the younger a child is when they’re first sentenced, the more likely they are to reoffend more frequently and violently as adults.”

However, the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) believes the Allan government needs to take further action regarding the proposed youth justice changes. They have raised concerns that the Youth Justice Bill 2024 “fall(s) short and risk(s) further harm and criminalisation of children”.

HRLC underscored that “the proposal to only raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12, and allow police to use limited force or transport children under 12, undermines the purpose of the reform”.

The independent organisation further expressed how “any engagement with the criminal legal system causes harm to a child, including first contact with police”.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission presented a report to the Victorian Parliament titled Yoorrook for Justice: Report into Victoria’s Child Protection and Criminal Justice Systems to address this issue. Among the 46 recommendations presented to the state government, raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 was one of the main ones.

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The HRLC has also put forward the recommendation that the Victorian government should actively seek to increase the opportunities for children to be “diverted to all stages of the legal process”.

HRLC supported this suggestion, arguing that “the evidence is clear that diverting more children away from the criminal legal system has a positive impact in reducing their chances of being recriminalised in future”.

The HRLC has put forward a comprehensive list of recommendations to the Victorian government with the goal of bringing about significant change and improvement in the state’s youth justice system.

These include:

• “Raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 years old with no exceptions and no new police powers.
• “Divert more children away from police and the criminal legal system;
• “Stick to their promise to make the state’s youth bail laws fairer for children by removing almost all reverse-onus bail provisions and abandon the proposed surveilling of children through a trial of ineffective electronic monitoring;
• “Curb the harm caused by youth prisons by banning harmful prison practices, including the solitary confinement, strip searching and spit hooding of children; and
• “Properly support community-led alternatives to police and prisons.”

Hurley stressed that children should not be imprisoned and called for the government to raise the age of criminal responsibility, insisting that this critical reform should be universally applied without any exemptions or the introduction of new police powers.

“Children do not belong in prisons. Raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 years old now is the bare minimum reform the Premier must action. This reform must apply to all children – no exemptions and no new police powers,” she said.

Hurley further said: “Increasing police powers and pipelining more children into youth prisons is never the answer. The answer is always building up the community support needed to help children avoid contact with – and the harms caused by – the criminal legal system in the first place.”