Australia is a vast land, and sometimes it’s easy to look at what’s happening elsewhere in the country and wonder if it has anything at all to do with us. Sometimes it doesn’t – but sometimes what happens in another state or territory can serve as a warning that it might just happen here too. When it is about children, wherever they are, we know some or many of them will be in single mother families too.
This is the case this week, with news that the Northern Territory has lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 10, meaning 10 year olds – children in every sense of the word – who commit crimes will be tried as adults.
It’s a move that counters everything experts know to be true about child development and the ability to make mature and informed decisions, particularly in difficult situations. Human rights advocates argue this move does nothing to lower the crime rate. It may take them out of sight, but beyond that it does quite the opposite, traumatising and marginalising children and setting them up for a life of anger and crime.
The chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child says that the Northern Territory has contravened Australia’s international treaty obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, by lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years old.
The NT’s new conservative Country Liberal Party government campaigned on the issue, vowing to lower the age of criminal responsibility as a measure to combat crime. The fact that they were elected shows that a majority of the NT community accept the disinformation that lowering the age will fix the problems rather that the far more likely truth: that it will create more distressed teenagers and young adults with a propensity for criminal activity.
The NT already has Australia’s highest rates of children in detention and a recent NT Children’s Commissioner report found that 94 per cent of incarcerated children are Indigenous.
The move by the NT government is out of step with the thinking of governments of the other states and territories, who are all working to actually raise the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 14. The ACT, Tasmania and Victoria have all committed to raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
Concerningly, Victoria has now walked back that promise and is planning to raise it to just 12. That’s what we all have to watch out for, and why we all need to lobby our government to change its thinking.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds contacted the NT Chief Minister to discuss plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility, but her request was rejected. Now the has law passed, Ms Hollonds is urging the Prime Minister to make child welfare and justice a national cabinet priority.
“The fact that this law has passed in the Northern Territory is evidence of the failure of all the other systems that should have helped these children and their families much, much earlier,” she said. “It’s deeply disappointing that the criminal justice system is seen as the only solution to addressing the problems they have.”
CSMC has always cared about the rights of our children, with one of our first slogans ‘A Fair Chance for Every Child’. We continue to advocate where we can, and have a strong commitment to raising the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years.
If you have thoughts on this issue, you can email action@csmc.org.au or join our closed Facebook group Single Mothers Stronger Together and comment there.
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