What is the Minimum Legal Age for Criminal Responsibility in Australia?

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In the ACT, children are now protected from arrest, charges, or sentencing under the territory’s laws until they reach the age of 14.

Instead of facing legal charges, these children will be directed towards therapeutic support services aimed at addressing the underlying causes of their actions.

However, youths involved in serious crimes like murder, severe violence, and sexual offenses are not covered by these reforms. These changes took effect on July 1, raising the legal age of criminal responsibility from the earlier age of 10.

In other parts of Australia, the ages of criminal responsibility are among the lowest worldwide, which does not align with the international standards proposed by the United Nations.

‘The ACT has looked at the evidence’

Jonathan Hunyor of the Justice and Equity Centre said locking up 10-year-old children only worsens social problems.

“The ACT has looked at the evidence, and the ACT is obviously serious about making their community safer because we know that locking up kids makes the community less safe,” he said.

“What locking up kids does is it cruels their chances, it takes them away from positive influences.”

Rather than helping kids build social capital, “what we do is place kids in a situation where they build criminal capital,” Hunyor added.

“They go to the university of crime, they get taught that they’re criminals.”

‘Programs need to run inside communities, not prisons’

Dr Faith Gordon, an Australian National University youth-justice researcher, said the ACT is now in line with “what international evidence has been telling us for years”.

Pointing to countries such as Norway, she notes that “big jumps in funding for programs that are run inside communities, not prisons” had led to “big drops in the number of children locked up”.

Here’s where the rest of Australia stands when it comes to the age of criminal responsibility.

Victoria

Victoria passed the Youth Justice Bill in 2024, increasing its minimum age from 10 to 12, and plans to further review the possibility of raising it to 14 by 2027.

Tasmania

The Tasmanian government intends to elevate the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years and plans to raise the minimum age of detention to 16 years. They aim to create alternatives to detention for 14 and 15-year-olds, with full implementation expected by July 2029.

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory briefly led the nation when it raised the age of criminal responsibility to 12 in 2023. A change of government reversed that decision in August 2024 and the minimum age is back to 10.

NSW

Australia’s most-populous state has held the line at 10, despite medical and legal bodies urging change. A joint statement from Mental Health Carers NSW and BEING NSW this year renewed calls to match the ACT’s standard.

Queensland

Queensland’s Adult Crime, Adult Time laws, introduced at the end of 2024, kept the age at 10 and allow some serious offences by children to be dealt with in the adult system.

South Australia

Adelaide is consulting on whether to raise the age to 12 but has not drafted a bill.

Western Australia

Western Australia has also kept it at 10. Legal Aid WA confirms the age in its current guidance and the government has given no timetable for reform.

The federal position

The national minimum age is 10, but balanced by the safeguard principle of doli incapax, which requires prosecutors to prove a child aged 10 to 13 understood their actions were seriously wrong.

In July 2024, then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus was asked about a national change at the National Press Club.

He said the issue remained “under consideration” and argued it was less urgent for Canberra because “we have no children presently convicted of Commonwealth offences”.

Gordon said the “patchwork of legislation across the country is impractical and unfair”.

“A child in Canberra now gets health and family support. A child an hour away in NSW can still be taken to a police cell. We need a single national rule so every child, no matter where they live, has the same chance.”