Raising the age of criminal responsibility and keeping kids in community
Change the Record
Raise the Age

TOTAL GRANTED
$45,000

Impact AreaSupporting Indigenous Self-Determination
Year First Supported 2021

Change the Record is Australia’s only national Aboriginal led justice coalition of legal, health and family violence prevention experts. Its mission is to end the incarceration of, and family violence against, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Raising the age of criminal responsibility and keeping kids in community
Raise the Age is a campaign for the federal, state and territory governments to do what’s right and change the laws to raise the age, so children aged 10 to 13 years are not sent to prison.
Issue
Everyone knows that children do best when they are supported, nurtured and loved. But across Australia, children as young as 10 can be arrested by police, charged with an offence, hauled before a court and locked away in youth prisons.
In just one year across Australia close to 600 children aged 10 to 13 years were locked up and thousands more were hauled through the criminal legal system. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are disproportionately impacted by these laws and pushed into prison cells at even higher rates, accounting for 65 per cent of these younger children in prisons.
When children this young are forced through a criminal legal process at such a formative age, they can suffer immense harm – to their health, wellbeing and future. Ten year old kids belong in schools and playgrounds, not placed in handcuffs, held in watchhouses or locked in prisons away from their families, community and culture. Governments can change this by raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years.
Response
Raise the Age is leading a national campaign, raising awareness of the issue and advocating for an increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility.
The campaign has been developed by a coalition of legal, medical and social justice organisations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community owned organisations. This group includes National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, Change the Record, Human Rights Law Centre, Law Council of Australia, Amnesty International Australia, Australian Medical Association, Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Public Health Association of Australia.
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