Opposition slams probe into let offs
A NATIONWIDE investigation that could see juvenile offenders get away with breaking the law until they are older than 10 has been slammed by the State Opposition as a “waste of time and money”.
Federal Attorney- General Christian Porter and his state colleagues last week signed off on a 12- month investigation on whether to raise the criminal age of responsibility.
It would mean that children under the agreed age could not be prosecuted because they were not considered to have fully developed understanding of right and wrong and thus deemed incapable of committing a crime.
Attorney- General Yvette D’Ath said there had been no discussion of raising the age of criminal responsibility specifically to 16 years.
“I can say right now that the Palaszczuk Government has no intentions and would not support the lifting of the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 16,” she said
“What we are willing to do is allow this working group to look at this issue and report back in 12 months’ time to the Council of Attorneys- General.”
In a rebuke of their federal counterparts, the state LNP has labelled the move a waste of time and money.
“Young people should know the difference between right and wrong at age 10, let alone 14 or 15,” shadow attorneygeneral David Janetzki said.
“Young offenders must be held accountable for their crimes and anything else is an insult to victims who have had their cars stolen or homes broken into.
“If you are old enough to commit a serious crime, you are old enough to understand the consequences.”
More than a third of all inmates at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, as of yesterday morning, were aged 15 or under. There were 25 16- yearold inmates and 32 juvenile prisoners aged 17.
Townsville- based CQ University criminologist Dr Anne Ferguson welcomed the investigation and said the younger a child was when they entered the justice system, the more likely they were to remain there.
“If we aim to do something about our incarceration rate we need to look at what age we get children into the system,” she said.
“Children need a bright future. We don’t want them to be to stuck in the quicksand of the prison system for a long time.
“If we incarcerate them, especially at 10, we are just going to have more problems [ in the long run] than what we’d solve [ in the short term].”
Former Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson’s report into the Queensland youth justice system earlier this year recommended the issue of the appropriate age of criminal responsibility be considered at a national level.