Police do not support exceptions for young people accused of serious crimes, including murder and sexual assault, when the ACT raises the age of criminal responsibility.
But Families and Community Services Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said she did not believe the territory had the service system, or was able to develop the services, to respond to young people who commit serious crimes.
A bill is before the ACT Legislative Assembly to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14. The age will raise to 12 on commencement and will then rise to 14 in July 2025.
However, those aged 12 and 13 will still be able to be charged for murder, intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm, sexual assault in the first degree or an act of indecency in the first degree.
The territory's police force has said it does not support the exceptions in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the bill if the government raises the age to 14.
"In a practical sense, we're of the opinion that you can either form criminal intent or you can't. You can't divide that up into the types of criminal activities that you can do," ACT acting deputy chief police officer Linda Champion said in a hearing on Thursday.
ACT Policing does believe the age should only rise to 12 and should be nationally consistent.
The Greens are supporting the bill before the Assembly but both Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury and Youth Justice Minister Emma Davidson do not want exceptions.
The Greens' ministers are hopeful a review of the legislation, which will take place five years following the passage of the bill, could result in the carve outs being dropped.
Ms Stephen-Smith said she did not think the ACT had the necessary services to deal with the "extraordinarily unlikely" circumstance where a child of 12 or 13 was charged with one of the serious crimes.
She pointed to the recent tragedy in Belgrade where a 13-year-old shot dead eight students. The criminal age of responsibility in Serbia is 14.
Ms Stephen-Smith said, according to media reports, the shooter had been detained and confined in a psychiatric facility. She said she did not believe this was in the best interests for children and that Bimberi Youth Justice Centre would offer better rehabilitation than that.
"What we would do in such a case in the ACT, I do not know and I do not believe that we have a service system that could respond," she said.
"We don't have a psychiatric facility that would be appropriate for confining and detaining a 13-year-old and we could not establish a bespoke response in a short period of time and if we did establish a bespoke response in short period of time it would effectively mean segregating, detaining, confining a young person."
