Dear Editor, I disagree with my old Assembly colleague Gary Humphries (CW 15 July 2021, p12) that the age of criminal consent should be raised from 10 to 14.
There are several reasons for this:
1. Currently, a court has to be satisfied that a young person aged 10 to 13 actually knows what they’ve done is wrong before they can be prosecuted, so what’s the problem?
2. Because they are young, police will only charge 10 to 13-year-olds for the more serious offences and/or when public safety demands it.
3. As a former defence lawyer in the ACT and NSW (1976-1978 and 1992-1995), as an ACT prosecutor (1979-1988), I have found it fairly rare for 10 and 11-year-olds to appear before the courts, but I certainly prosecuted quite a number of 12 and 13-year-olds for serious crimes; those kids knew right from wrong, as did the kids of that age I defended.
4. Gary mentions the tragic Bulger case where two vicious 10 and 11-year-olds tortured and killed a helpless little two-year-old boy in the UK. They were jailed as a result and certainly knew at the time what they did was wrong.
5. Do we want 12 and 13-year-olds (or even 10 and 11-year-olds), to be able to kill, cause serious injury and burgle homes without jail time? It won’t work and is just plain wrong in my view to not jail them; there has to be standards and there has to be a deterrent for criminal behaviour.
6. The answer lies in having serious rehabilitation initiatives and programs in place in juvenile justice institutions so these children have a chance of coming out of a juvenile justice institution better than when they went in. That is the aim of juvenile justice institutions. They are not like adult jails. When I was Minister responsible for juvenile justice, I ensured we had a school at Quamby which led to a number of young detainees getting at least their Year 10 certificate and a few of them learning a trade and qualifying for subjects toward their trade certificates and apprenticeships when they got out.
7. Studies we did in the late 1990s found that the majority of young people leaving Quamby did not reoffend and go on to adult prisons. I don’t know if the current government has kept these programs up but if they have not, it’s essential they reinstate them.
8. It’s also a sad fact that for many 10 to 13-year-olds our juvenile justice institution is a safer place than their home.
Forget what the UN wants; no other Australian jurisdiction is at this stage going down this path – let’s concentrate on good rehabilitation and good programs to stop kids from offending in the first place.
Bill Stefaniak, Former ACT Attorney-General, Juvenile Justice Minister and Public Prosecutor
