Tuesday 13 August 2024 – for immediate release
The Commission for Children and Young People has expressed deep disappointment in today’s Victorian Government decision not to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 years of age by 2027.
The Youth Justice Bill being debated in the Legislative Council this week would raise the age to 12 by 2025, but the Commission, together with medical, legal and other advocates, has consistently argued that 14 years of age reflects the international consensus and the cognitive developmental evidence that children under 14 are too young to be held criminally responsible.
‘The decision to now abandon the staged move to 14 in 2027 has let children and young people down, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds, children who have experienced trauma, mental ill health or live with disability. These are the children, and their families, who need holistic supports so that criminal behaviour does not ruin their lives, and create more victims of crime,’ said Meena Singh, Victoria’s Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, today.
Commissioner Singh pointed to the work of the Aboriginal Justice Agreement and Wirkara Kulpa, Victoria’s first Aboriginal Youth Justice Strategy, as evidence of collaborative community work to address youth offending.
‘In Victoria, we are on track to meet Closing the Gap Target 11, to reduce the number of Aboriginal children and young people in youth justice detention by 30 per cent by 2031. This demonstrates change can happen with the appropriate supports and services targeting early intervention, led by Aboriginal community knowledge and practice.
‘Charging and imprisoning 12 and 13-year-olds does not make the community safe. By entrenching such young children in the justice system, rather than diverting them away from it, we are promoting their criminalisation, and making more serious offending at a later age more likely.
‘As a community we’re inclined to want to blame and punish, and some of that is very understandable when we are talking about individual victims and their families, but when this drives policy responses it does not produce effective solutions,’ Commissioner Singh concluded.
In April, the Commission and Victoria Legal Aid issued a joint statement calling for the immediate raising of the age of criminal responsibility to 14, without exceptions. This was recommendation 35 of the Yoorrook Justice Commission report, and recommendation 8 of the Commission’s Our youth, our way inquiry (2021).
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