At the age of 10, a child is considered too young by Facebook to create an account. Airlines may refuse them a spot on a flight on some routes if they are unsupervised. An average 10-year-old weighs 31.5 kilograms and is 138 centimetres tall – small enough to need a booster seat in a car in some Australian states.
Yet a child of 10 can still be charged with a crime, brought before the courts, sentenced and imprisoned in juvenile detention in most parts of the country, including Victoria.
Crime has dropped overall in Victoria, but youth offending increased in the 12 months to September.
This is one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in the world. The age is set much higher elsewhere – at 18 in Belgium and Luxembourg, while in Portugal it is 16, and in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden it is 15.
Daniel Andrews-era reforms will raise the cut-off age from 10 to 12 by the end of next year, meaning children aged 10 and 11 will no longer be held criminally responsible for their actions. The focus will instead be on connecting them and their families with support services. In 2027, the age of criminal responsibility is scheduled to rise to 14, which is deemed the minimum by the United Nations.
While the changes are a step in the right direction, 2027 is a long time to wait in order to bring the state’s legal system in line with international norms, particularly for those children and teens being shunted between police stations, the courts and juvenile detention.
As The Age reported this week, crimes committed by minors are at a nine-year high, and the number of offences committed by children aged 10 to 13 rose by a third in the year to September 30.
The Age supports raising the age of criminal responsibility, but these statistics highlight the imminent challenge facing policymakers: we need structures in place to ensure children who break the law, or are at risk of doing so, receive the support and education they need to become law-abiding adults.
In explaining the timeline for raising the age, the government, to its credit, has flagged an “alternative service model” that provides supportive, diversionary programs for 12 and 13-year-olds. Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes warned in April that raising the age of culpability too hastily without these supports could lead to unintended consequences.
“You’re going to have kids falling through the gap, and you’re going to have a waiting list of kids stepping into custody at 14,” she said.
It’s a sensible approach, but the latest crime statistics highlight the need for greater urgency.
Former Victoria Police chief commissioner Kel Glare, speaking to The Age, warned that there were no effective programs diverting children from crime, and no plan had been put forward by the government to properly support youth offenders once the age of criminality increases.
“The government and all the agencies need to get off their backsides and actually do something,” Glare said in response to the latest Crime Statistics Agency figures showing child offending has reached a nine-year high.
Michael Stanton, president of civil liberties group Liberty Victoria, warned in April of a weak policy from a government “still paranoid about being wedged on law and order instead of committing to evidence-based reform”.
Victorian Children’s Commissioner Liana Buchanan has said that by criminalising children we fail them twice – the first failure is to properly care for them and the second is to subject them to a draconian justice system likely to trap them in a lifetime of criminality.
The state government must urgently respond to calls from the Law Council, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and many others for wraparound support services, early intervention prevention and treatment programs, justice reinvestment and trauma-informed initiatives along with community-led diversion programs.
The government has claimed it is consulting police on developing their services. The success of these reforms will also depend on consultation with psychologists, doctors, Indigenous leaders and people with experience of the juvenile criminal justice system to build this network.
Creating better referral pathways in schools and hospitals, as well as child protection services, is key, while many already existing programs could be expanded, including NSW programs Maranguka, an Indigenous-led justice reinvestment project, and New Street Services, an early-intervention program addressing harmful sexual behaviour.
This will cost money, the Productivity Commission concedes, but “any cost for intensive wraparound services will be far less than what we are currently paying to take them to court,” it has found.
If the government fails to provide the safeguards it has promised, Victorians will judge them harshly. The same will happen if those safeguards don’t provide genuine support for the rising number of children needing help to stay out of the justice system.
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