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On 26 July last year, state and territory attorneys-general deferred a long-awaited decision on raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, citing the need for more time to explore alternatives to incarceration.
One year on, there is still no national consensus or change.
It’s prompted renewed calls to make the move and a coalition of legal, medical and human rights groups to write to federal Attorney-General Michaelia Cash.
The group of 47 organisations from the Raise the Age coalition - including the Human Rights Law Centre, Murdoch Children s Research Institute, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and multiple Indigenous legal centres - have written to Senator Cash seeking an update on progress.
A coalition of legal, medical and human rights groups have written to Attorney-General Michaelia Cash in a renewed push to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
In Australia, children as young as 10 can be arrested by police, remanded in custody, convicted by the courts and jailed.
Some 499 children aged between 10 and 13 were detained in the youth justice system in 2019/20, with more than two-thirds identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Federal, state and territory attorneys-general met on July 27, 2020, to discuss raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, which would bring the nation in line with international standards.
But they deferred a decision by at least one year to allow a working group, led by the WA justice department, to examine alternatives to imprisonment for youth offenders.
‘Delta is very unusual’: Young people warned the variant may pose greater risks
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Infectious disease experts are concerned about worrying signs that younger people appear to be at more risk of becoming seriously ill and hospitalised if they are infected with the Delta variant.
However, uncertainty remains among the science community about whether the COVID-19 variant is causing more severe disease in the young or simply infecting all unvaccinated age groups at a faster rate than its predecessors.
Professor Tony Cunningham, an infectious diseases physician with the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, is concerned by the growing number of people under 40 becoming very ill with the Delta strain.
Author Archives: George Patton
George Patton is a Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Health Research with the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children s Research Institute. He is a Senior Principal Research Fellow with Australia s National Health and Medical Research Council. He trained in Medicine in Australia and has worked in both the UK and Germany. He is a psychiatrist and Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. He is an epidemiologist and studies adolescent health from the global to the local level.
Two major reports released in the past week shine a light on Australia’s future.
The fifth Intergenerational Report addressed the sustainability of the Australian government budget through to 2060 based on current economic and demographic trends.
In the context of COVID-19’s disruptions to the national economy, it received much press attention. It made little comment on young Australians, beyond noting they make up a smaller proportion of the population than ever before. Yet young Australians are central actors in the nation’s economic future: they will determine patterns of population growth, workforce participation, productivity and social cohesion.
In contrast, Australia’s Youth, the first national report on young Australians in a decade, attracted little attention. The Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report detailed how our 12- to 24-year-olds are faring in their health, education, housing, employment prospects, finances and well-being. In a decade where the liv