Victoria scraps plans to raise age of criminal responsibility to 14

The Victorian government has backed away from a commitment to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 and will introduce tougher bail laws for repeat offenders in a bid to ease community concerns about youth crime.

As Guardian Australia has revealed, Prime Minister Jacinta Allan has made a major policy shift – and announced several changes to the 1,000-page Youth Justice Bill – before debate began in the upper house of parliament.

“The bill before Parliament will raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12, and it will stay there,” she told reporters Tuesday morning. “We are the first state in the country to make this change.”

In 2023, Allan’s predecessor, Daniel Andrews, committed to a two-stage process to raise the age from 10 to 12, then to 14 by 2027, with exceptions for serious crimes including murder and terrorism.

But Allan said his decision was made “at another time, by another government with a different prime minister”.

Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said on Tuesday there were no children under the age of 14 currently in custody in Victoria.

Victoria Police and the Police Association, the union representing officers, have long opposed an increase to 14, citing an increase in the “prevalence and seriousness of criminal offending” among 12 and 13-year-olds.

On Tuesday, Police Commissioner Shane Patton, speaking alongside the Prime Minister, said he was pleased the government was not going ahead with the change.

But the move sparked immediate backlash from indigenous organizations, legal experts, medical bodies and human rights groups.

They have long called for Victoria to meet the international standard of 14, because medical evidence shows that younger children lack the maturity and cognitive function to be held criminally responsible.

Nerita Waight, executive director of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, described the decision as a “treacherous betrayal” of First Nations children.

“It is clear that the Victorian government has caved in to the fear campaign being waged by Victoria Police and the Herald Sun,” Waight said. “Neither will reward the government for bending the knee.”

ignore newsletter promotion

Monique Hurley, deputy legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, said it was a “heartless measure” that would “shatter children’s lives and cause lifelong avoidable harm”.

“Instead of listening to the extensive expert evidence from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, medical, child development, youth, legal and human rights groups about what works to help children and keep the community safe, the Allan government has once again chosen a knee-jerk response,” Hurley said.

The government also said it would change the law on bail so that a person could be remanded in custody if there was an “unacceptable risk” that they might commit offences such as aggravated burglary, carjacking, dangerous driving or domestic violence.

The government will also introduce an offence of committing a serious crime while on bail, just months after abolishing the offence of committing an indictable offence while on bail.

Symes said the old offence had “unintentionally” targeted low-level offences, leading to an over-representation of vulnerable cohorts, including people at risk of homelessness, Aboriginal Victorians and people with disabilities.

“What we’re doing is recalibrating and introducing an offence of committing a schedule 1 or schedule 2 offence while on bail, to recognise that reoffending in that range of serious offences is something that the community is concerned about,” she said.

The amendments will also clarify the police’s powers to revoke bail in the event of default.

Patton said he expected to see more people placed in pretrial detention because of the changes.

The data follows the release in June of data from the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency which showed a 20 per cent increase in incidents involving young offenders over a 12-month period.

But if we take into account longer-term population growth, the figures remain relatively stable. In 2024, there were 3,365 offenders per 100,000 people aged 10 to 17, a figure comparable to that of 2017 (3,358).

CSA data also shows that the 2024 crime rate (the rate of offences per 100,000 people) remains lower than figures recorded before the start of the pandemic.