A Victorian government MP has urged his party to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 to keep children as young as 10 out of prison.
Broadmeadows MP Frank McGuire, who is also the parliamentary secretary for crime prevention, said governments must call out and address “systemic injustices”, including laws that disproportionately affect Aboriginal people.
Frank McGuire has urged governments to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14. Credit:Darrian Traynor
In July last year, the nation’s chief law makers, including Victoria’s then-attorney-general Jill Hennessy, deferred a decision to raise the age for a year after agreeing more work needed to be done to determine alternative ways to deal with young offenders.
Speaking in the Victorian Parliament’s lower house on a bill seeking to decriminalise public drunkenness, Mr McGuire said there had been “too much sorry business, too many preventable deaths, too many blighted lives”.
“[The deaths of Aboriginal people in police custody] is the chilling, fatal echo of history we are changing to save lives,” Mr McGuire said.
“Today’s reforms take us in the right direction, but we need to do more. Children as young as 10 are also being locked up. This disproportionately impacts Indigenous children. Their childhoods are stolen.
“We must respond by raising the age of legal criminal responsibility from 10 to 14. A child as young as 10 should never find themselves in jail.”
There were almost 600 children aged 10 to 13 in detention in Australia last financial year. More than 60 per cent were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children.
A national campaign to raise the age of criminal responsibility, in line with other jurisdictions around the world, has been backed by a coalition of legal, medical and social justice organisations, including the Law Council of Australia, the Australian Medical Association and Indigenous-led groups.
Ms Hennessy last year said the over-representation of Indigenous minors in the justice system was unacceptable.
Studies show children under 14 who enter the justice system are more likely to be suffering from underlying trauma, have an undiagnosed disability and come from poorer families.
Almost 70 per cent of 10-year-olds in detention had also received child protection services, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows.
The Victorian Parliament is debating legislation, set to pass the lower house this week, to abolish public drunkenness as a criminal offence – a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody three decades ago.
The offence was brought to the fore when Yorta Yorta grandmother Tanya Day was arrested in 2017 for being drunk on a train, and sustained fatal injuries while in police custody.
An expert panel, including police and Aboriginal health and legal workers, released a report last year recommending the abolition of public drunkenness as an offence. They also called for culturally appropriate social services, prevention strategies, improved first response and moving intoxicated people to a safe place.
The powerful police union at the time called on Victoria’s plan to decriminalise public drunkenness as “all press release and no policy” and said it was “dangerous virtue signalling”.
The Victorian opposition said they would not support the government’s bill.
A Victorian government spokeswoman said the most recent budget included $11.8 million for an Aboriginal Youth Justice Strategy to address the over-representation of young Indigenous people in custody.
“The best outcome for young people is to avoid contact with the justice system in the first place – which is why tackling the root causes of youth offending is our first priority,” the spokeswoman said.
“We need to do more to support young Aboriginal Victorians to strengthen their connections with community and family – giving them every chance to make the most of their lives and avoid contact with the justice system.”
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