Children who commit serious crimes such as murder and sexual assault will still face the criminal justice system when the ACT raises the age of minimum age of criminal responsibility.
But the move to have exceptions has left the community sector "deeply concerned" and the government is being urged to reconsider this position.
The ACT government has released a position paper on the reform, confirming the age will first be raised to 12 and would eventually increase to 14.
A bill is expected to be presented to the Legislative Assembly next year. The bill would immediately increase the age to 12 and two years after it would rise to 14.
There will be exceptions for serious crimes but these will only apply to 12- and 13-year-olds.
Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said the government felt this was needed to meet community expectations.
"The cabinet has discussed that where we have the most serious of offences, murder and sexual assaults, that we may need to put in place a system where there is still a criminal justice response for young people to ensure that the community feels there is accountability there," he said.
The government's position paper does note instances of children committing serious crimes like murder and sexual assault are "exceedingly rare".
The ACT government's position is at odds with the United Nations, which has the position the minimum age of criminal responsiblity should be 14 and there should be no exceptions for any crime.
ACT Council of Social Service head of policy Gemma Killen has expressed significant concern about the fact there the government is pursuing exceptions.
"Medical and scientific consensus is that people under the age of 14 do not have the developmental capacity to be held criminally responsible and that detention increases their odds of reoffending," Dr Killen said.
"If we agree that children cannot be held responsible for minor offences, we must agree that that are not criminally responsible for more serious offences."
The ACT government made the decision to take the staggered approach to raising the age as the number of 10- and 11-year-olds in the criminal justice system is smaller and the service system is already able to respond to that group.
A range of extra social services supports need to be implemented to allow time for an alternative pathway, ACT Families and Community Services Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said.
"The 12- and 13-year-olds is a slightly larger group, we are talking about 40 to 50 people a year who come into contact with the criminal justice system," she said.
"We need a genuine alternative pathway for those young people.
"But we also want to build a service system that can continue to support those young people beyond the age of 13 so we don't want to have a completely separate system for 10, 11 and 13-year-olds."
A major report last year found sweeping reforms were needed to the ACT's service and support systems if the age of criminal responsibility is raised, concluding without reforms the legislative change would not result in better outcomes for children.
The agreement to raise the age to 14 has come after there were disagreements earlier this year between Labor and the Greens about the reforms. It is understood the parties were divided on when to introduce the legislation and the form it would take.
Labor and the Greens agreed to raise the age in the parliamentary and governing agreement but an age was not specified.
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