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Arguments for Raising the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility

出版	SSRN, 2022
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=Lp7czwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋This paper 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. 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 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. In addition, this paper argues that a low MACR adversely affects Indigenous children who comprise the majority of children under the age of 14 years who come before youth courts in Australia and are sentenced to either youth detention or a community-based sanction.