After two and a half years of inaction and delay from the government, 48 organisations have publicly released their submissions to the Council of Attorneys-General working on raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14.

Australian law presently allows children as young as 10 to be arrested, strip-searched and imprisoned. According to 2019 figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, approximately 600 children under the age of 14 across the country are in Australian prisons every year.

These laws are in stark contrast to international standards and human rights law, with the median age of criminal responsibility worldwide being 14 years old. Australia has received 250 recommendations from over 120 countries to examine and update its laws so that they are in line with international expectations.  

Meena Singh, legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, said our laws are “totally out of step with international human rights law and international standards”.

“They say they need more research-based evidence to raise the age, but the evidence is crystal clear. And it’s been sitting on their desk for over a year,” she said.

“Locking up children as young as 10 does not make the community any safer. Instead, it further entrenches those children in the criminal legal system and proves that governments have failed to provide culturally safe support instead.”

Amnesty International Australia Indigenous rights lead Nolan Hunter emphasised that raising the age had the support of health and welfare experts around the world.

“The Attorneys-General have kicked the can down the road long enough. We don’t need another report to tell us that raising the age from 10 to 14 is the right, evidence-based thing to do,” Mr Hunter said.

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The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility Working Group was established in late 2018 to address the issue – and promised that they would draw from “relevant jurisdictional and international experience, and report back within 12 months”. By February 2020, the working group had called for, and received, 88 non-confidential submissions from the general public as to whether to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility – 48 of which have been released.

On 27 July, the working group presented a report with their findings to the Meeting of Attorneys-General. Since then, over 50 organisations have written a joint letter asking for the remainder of the submissions and the report to be made public in the interest of transparency and public accountability, which has been ignored.

In their submissions, all 48 organisations call for the minimum age to be raised nationally to 14 without any exceptions, while 96 per cent say the current laws are contributing to the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in prison. 

Indigenous children aged between 10 and 17 are 23 times more likely to be in detention than non-Indigenous children and are overall disproportionately affected by the current system. Eight hundred thirty-five per 100,000 Indigenous children aged 10-14 were in youth justice supervision on an average day in 2017-18, compared to 28 per 100,000 non-Indigenous children, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Cheryl Axleby, Change the Record co-chair, said that “we cannot let this evidence sit on the bookshelves of politicians like the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.”

“Dozens and dozens of submissions made by legal, health and youth experts have been hidden and ignored by Attorneys-General for over a year, as they have sat and done nothing while our children languish in prisons,” Ms Axleby added.

“I can only assume that state and territory Attorneys-General have refused to publish these submissions because they lack the political courage to act.”

Lauren Croft

Lauren is a journalist at Lawyers Weekly and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from Macleay College. Prior to joining Lawyers Weekly, she worked as a trade journalist for media and travel industry publications and Travel Weekly. Originally born in England, Lauren enjoys trying new bars and restaurants, attending music festivals and travelling. She is also a keen snowboarder and pre-pandemic, spent a season living in a French ski resort.