The national children's commissioner is urging the Northern Territory's chief minister to meet with her before introducing controversial reforms to lower the age of criminal responsibility next week. A coalition of justice advocates are accusing state and territory governments nationwide of ignoring the evidence when it comes to tackling youth justice. A warning, this story contains the image of an Aboriginal person who has died.
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00:00After a landslide election win, the Northern Territory's new Chief Ministers preparing
00:10to deliver a key election promise to become the country's first jurisdiction to lower
00:15the age of criminal responsibility from 12 back to 10.
00:19We have to start to look at the evidence from around the world and in Australia that shows
00:24that the younger you lock up children, the more likely they are to go on to commit more
00:30and more violent crimes.
00:32Well, what evidence does the Human Rights Commission have that it doesn't?
00:35A recent report from the Commissioner into evidence-based approaches to youth justice
00:40recommends raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 as jurisdictions around the country
00:46grapple with youth crime.
00:48In Queensland, both parties are making tough on crime pitches a major focus ahead of the
00:53election.
00:54In Western Australia, the government's announced plans for a new youth detention centre following
00:59the state's first teenage death in custody.
01:03What is world's best practice is smaller therapeutic facilities based in communities.
01:09Advocates are concerned that around the country, politicians are making youth justice pitches
01:14that ignore the evidence on how to make the community safer and the interests of children
01:18and teenagers who are too young to vote.
01:21A coalition of national legal and medical experts is in Canberra to call for federal
01:26reform, including the former minister who handed down the findings of the Royal Commission
01:31into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
01:33If you had told me that the system would not have improved over those 33 years and that
01:39we hadn't followed the world's best practice, I would never have believed it because this
01:45country has indeed failed.
01:48The acting Prime Minister was unavailable for comment on the calls for national youth
01:52justice reform.