Children aged 10 to 13 facing criminal penalties in New South Wales are “overwhelmingly” from disadvantaged backgrounds and disproportionately Indigenous, according to a new report.
It comes amid debate over the minimum age of criminal responsibility, after the Victorian government reneged on a commitment to raise the age from 12 to 14. In NSW, children as young as 10 can be charged, convicted and incarcerated.
The report, released on Wednesday by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (Bocsar), found more than half of all 10- to 13-year-olds facing criminal penalties in NSW courts had been the victim of violence and about a third had accessed specialist homelessness services.
Jonathon Hunyor, the chief executive of the Justice and Equity Centre, said the report “confirms that children are being criminalised for their disadvantage”.
“We should all be outraged that children who need support and stability are instead cycled through the criminal justice system,” he said.
Ten children aged between 10 and 13 charged with a criminal offence faced a custodial sentence in NSW last year, the report said.
Of the 719 young people who appeared before court, more than half had all charges withdrawn by the prosecution and a quarter were found not guilty.
Yet 171 children under the age of 14 were placed in custody on remand, with the majority released after 24 hours generally resulting from the court granting the young person bail after it was initially refused by police.
“That’s the most serious end of the criminal justice system and affecting some very young children, which is really troubling,” the Bocsar executive director, Jackie Fitzgerald, said.
“We also know that early involvement in the justice system is a really strong predictor of further involvement, both as an adolescent and also as an adult.”
The report found that almost a fifth of police proceedings against people under the age of 18 in 2023 were for those aged between 10 and 13. This equated to 4,500 legal proceedings against young people below the age of 14.
Those young people were disproportionately Indigenous, making up 41.3% of the 10- to 13-year-olds who faced police proceedings in 2023.
Almost half of the 4,500 lived outside a major city, despite only 25% of 10- to 13-year-olds in NSW living in rural and remote areas. The rate of young people who faced police proceedings in the regions was 2.2 times the NSW average.
Earlier this year, the premier, Chris Minns, ruled out raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 as he announced sweeping new laws that would make it harder for teenagers to get bail and would criminalise “posting and boasting” about offences on social media.
Raise the Age NSW said in a statement that the report by Boscar showed the “status quo” was not working.
“This Bocsar report reaffirms the need to raise the age of criminal responsibility and invest in solutions identified by Aboriginal communities that address specific drivers of offending behaviour,” the Just Reinvest NSW chief executive, Geoff Scott, said.
“We’re dealing with children here; we can do better and should do better – putting a greater effort into 10-year-olds is not a hard ask.”
