Campaign to Raise the Age
KEY PROJECT | Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ Rights
In Australia, primary school aged children can be sent to prison.
The Human Rights Law Centre is calling for all states and territories to raise
the age criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14.
Children do not belong behind bars. Yet 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 completely out of step with most other countries.
Over the past year, close to 450 children aged ten to 13 were locked up and thousands more hauled through the criminal legal system. Due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, inequality and systemic racism in our laws and policies, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children account for 61 per cent of these children. The evidence is clear, locking up children does not make our communities safer, instead, it sets children on a path of further offending and into the adult criminal justice system.
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. The Human Rights Law Centre continues to coordinate both the Steering Committee and the broader alliance of organisations.
The campaign is gaining momentum, with several states committing to, or indicating that they will raise the age. We need your support to push every state and territory government to do the right thing and raise the age to at least 14.
So far over 200,000 have signed the petition calling on governments across the country to raise the age. You can join the campaign by signing the petition here.
You can find out more about the campaign by visiting the raise the age website: raisetheage.org.au