Arguments for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility / Professor Chris Cuneen

"The age of criminal responsibility is the primary legal barrier to criminalisation and thus entry into the criminal justice system. This paper1 provides arguments for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR). Nationally the minimum age is 10 years old. Some Australian states set the MACR at 10 years in the mid-to late1970s (Queensland (1976), NSW (1977) and South Australia (1979)). However, only since the early 2000s has there been a uniform approach to the MACR in all Australian jurisdictions (Cunneen et al 2015: 250). The paper provides a number of reasons for raising the age: international comparisons; the protection of children's rights; the limited ability of the common law doctrine of doli incapax to protect young children; child developmental arguments and issues of mental illness and cognitive impairment; the over-representation of children in out-of-home-care (OOHC) among young children in the juvenile justice system, criminological arguments relating to the failure of an approach that relies on criminalisation and imprisonment; and the views of juvenile justice practitioners." -- Introduction (Page 4).