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Lawyers slam ‘unacceptable’ plan by incoming NT government to lower age of criminal responsibility
The newly elected Northern Territory Chief Minister’s plan to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years has raised significant concerns among legal organisations and advocacy groups regarding the government’s approach to tackling youth justice.
Grace Robbie
After being elected as the Northern Territory’s newest Chief Minister last week, Lia Finocchiaro has revealed her ambitious plans to address youth justice in the Northern Territory.
This announcement comes just two years after the Northern Territory became the first Australian jurisdiction to increase the age of criminal responsibility from a minimum of 10 to 12 years old.
Finocchiaro also revealed her intention to implement “boot camps” as a diversionary program for young offenders.
“It’s not just about dealing with young people or offenders once they’re already committing crimes.
“This is about making sure we give kids every opportunity in life to succeed, and that’s why our focus on getting kids to school is a very important part of our plan to reduce crime,” Finocchiaro said.
During the first parliamentary week, the newly elected Chief Minister also announced her plans to introduce a new Bail Amendment Bill known as “Declan’s Law”. This law is named after Declan Laverty, a 20-year-old employee at a bottle shop who was tragically murdered last year by a teenager who was out on bail.
“Declan’s Law will propose a suite of bail reforms designed to increase community safety by keeping violent and repeat offenders off our streets so that it may prevent another senseless death like Declan’s,” Finocchiaro said.
Finocchiaro’s announcement comes after the release of a significant report by the National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds, who emphasised the necessity of adopting a more compassionate approach to youth justice to confront the issue effectively.
Legal organisations and advocacy groups have raised their concerns regarding the Country Liberal Party’s plan to lower the criminal age of responsibility and introduce additional legal measures.
The Law Society Northern Territory expressed how “deeply concerned” it is about the Northern Territory government’s plan to “wind back” the age of criminal responsibility.
The president of the Law Society Northern Territory, Richard Henschke, outlined how “this comes at a time when the other Australian jurisdictions are considering policy reforms which will raise the age. As such, the society strongly urges the government to reconsider this step.”
Henschke also emphasised that imposing punitive measures on children as young as 10 years old is deemed “unacceptable” and has been demonstrated to have no positive results.
“Criminalising the behaviour of children as young as 10 years old by subjecting them to the Youth Justice System, including incarceration, is unacceptable and has been proven not to have any positive outcomes either for the child or the community generally,” Henschke said.
The Law Society of the Northern Territory stressed the need for the Northern Territory government to consider the reforms recommended in the recently released report by the National Children’s Commissioner, which “strongly advocates for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 14 years”.
The CEO of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait advocacy group SNAICC – National Voice for Our Children, Catherine Liddle, criticised the Northern Territory government’s plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility while speaking on ABC News Breakfast this week.
Liddle said: “At 10, you are just a child. The evidence had long shown, and again it was a royal commission that unearthed it in the Northern Territory, that the conditions in detention centres were absolutely inhumane.”
“And those findings have been backed up by reports right across the country to say conditions in detention centres actually do very little to work on the rehabilitation of the child and protection of the child.
“In actual fact, children come out more harmed than when they went in.”
