PROJECT | First Nations Justice

In Australia, children as young as 10 can be sent to prison. The Human Rights Law Centre is a founding member of the #RaiseTheAge campaign. We call on all states and territories to raise the age criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14.

Across Australia, children as young as ten can be charged by police and locked up in prison. Australia’s very low age of criminal responsibility is at odds with expert advice on childhood development and is out of step with most other countries. It is also contrary to Australia’s legal obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, inequality and systemic racism in our laws and policies, data confirms that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children continue to be over-represented in youth prisons in every Australian state and territory.

The Human Rights Law Centre is a founding member of the #RaisetheAge campaign which seeks to raise the age of criminal responsibility in all Australian jurisdictions from 10 to at least 14 years old. Launched in 2020, the campaign now has the support of over 115 organisations from every state and territory, and over 200,000 signed the petition calling on governments across the country to raise the age.

As a result of this work, multiple states and territories committed to raising the age:

• In November 2023, the ACT Government passed legislation to raise the age to 14 by 2025.
• In December 2023, the Tasmanian Government committed to becoming the first Australian state to raise the age to 14 with no exceptions by 2029. 

• In January 2024 the South Australian Government proposed raising the age of criminal responsibility and embarked on a consultation process.  

• In June 2024, the Victorian Government announced that it would raise the age to 12 but walked away from its commitment to raise it to 14 by 2027. 

Unfortunately, toxic rhetoric in the media has led to several states backflipping on their commitments to raise the age or seeking introducing harsh penalties for young people who come into contact with the criminal legal system. In the last couple of years, the Victorian Government turned its back on raising the age to 14 and the Queensland Government introduced punitive new “Adult Crime, Adult Time” laws.

To counter this regression, the Human Rights Law Centre is building a storytelling project that amplifies the voices of people who have been subjected to the criminal legal system as children. This project will form a powerful advocacy tool to grow support for alternatives to imprisonment.