A Greens push for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 14 years of age has reignited the debate in South Australia, with the state government saying it is considering the proposal.
In 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended 14 years as the minimum age of criminal responsibility.
Last year, Canada, France, Germany, Venezuela and Norway were among 31 UN member states to call on Australia to raise the age, but despite this, children as young as 10 can still be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced.
Despite more than four years of debate, the Council of Attorney-Generals last year handballed the decision back to state and territory governments, finding that more work needed to be done to find alternatives for dealing with young offenders.
Since then, the ACT and Tasmania have committed to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14.
On Wednesday, SA Greens MLC Robert Simms introduced a bill calling for the same to happen in South Australia.
"The United Nations has called for this because there is a view that children should not be held to the same level of responsibility as adults," Mr Simms said.
"We know that once children get trapped in the criminal system in this way then they are going to have a long-term interaction with that system and we don't want that.
"We also know that Aboriginal children are over-represented in terms of the children that are being incarcerated."
State government 'investigating'
South Australian Attorney-General Kyam Maher said all attorney-generals around Australia have previously made a commitment to increase the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12.
"We will have a look at the Greens bill and certainly do some work on whether the age should rise to 12 or to 14 but importantly too what sort of supports are put around that," he said.
"This is about finding ways that actually make the community safer by putting other supports around children that display this sort of antisocial behaviour without locking them up and that is what we are investigating at the moment."
South Australia's Legal Services Commission supports raising the age to 14.
The commission's chair, Gabrielle Canny, said children of that age do not have the cognitive skills of reasoning and impulse control.
"We have to look at the physiology of children's brains," she said.
"Children aged between 10 and 14 do not have a fully developed brain.
Ms Canny said there were other treatments and interventions for "antisocial behaviour".
"They need to be provided with therapeutic care and supervision, not locked up in a juvenile detention environment," she told ABC Radio Adelaide.
Ms Canny said authorities need to understand why children were out in the community committing crimes in the first place.
"Where are their families? What support needs to be provided to the families? Or is it that they're not settled into the care environment, what more support needs to be given there," she said.
Age is not the issue: SA Parole Board
SA Parole Board chair Frances Nelson QC told ABC Radio Adelaide the age of criminal responsibility was not the issue, and the government should instead focus on early intervention.
"Find out why they are behaving in this way, protect the community and other children from them in the process and do something to fix why they are behaving in that way."
On Thursday night, SA police arrested two girls — aged 10 and 11 — over an alleged assault of a 24-year-old woman.
Police allege the girls attacked the woman from behind, kicking, punching and pulling her to the ground, as she walked along North Terrace in front of the Adelaide Railway Station at 8.30pm.
A report released yesterday by the Office of the Guardian for Children and Young People found children and teenagers were arrested and detained in police cells 2,030 times in 2020-21.
The authors of the report concluded: "Our observations confirmed that the Watch House is not a suitable detention environment for children and young people."
