Document Type

Report

Publisher

Social Reinvestment WA / Edith Cowan University

School

School of Arts and Humanities

RAS ID

60339

Comments

Gately, N., Ellis, S., Finney, J. (2021). When is a child not a child? When they offend. The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility in Western Australia: Insights from the public. Australia. Social Reinvestment WA & Red Cross.

Abstract

In 2016, Australia was in the international spotlight after an 11-year-old child became the ‘youngest known person’ to be charged with murder (Booth, 2016). The minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) in Australia is 10 years old, with children being charged, trialled, sentenced, and imprisoned for breaking the law. In response to the case, Amnesty International called on the Australian Government to raise the MACR to 12 years, noting that ‘Australia’s out-of-step laws dictate’ that this boy could be held criminally responsible (Booth, 2016; O’Brien & Fitz-Gibbon, 2017). Australia has been under constant national and international pressure to align its juvenile justice processes with global human rights standards.

Best practice indicates that offending children be diverted away from the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in most cases. It is commonly cited that diversionary measures are not a popular rhetoric with the wider public who can influence political agendas. The problem with opinion data is that it is usually collected at one point in time with an ill-informed public who are reported to be punitive. Therefore, this project examined a sample of the public’s knowledge and attitudes towards the MACR before and after providing them with an MACR Fact Sheet. The major theme permeating the findings was of ‘right and wrong’ and who is responsible for developing and instilling this sensibility in children.

Additional Information

Suzanne Rock also known as Suzanne Ellis

DOI

10.25958/y61w-cm05

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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