Trevitt and Browne (2020) Raising the age of criminal responsibility describes the moral, medical, and legal arguments and evidence for raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 years, including the disproportionate impact of the existing criminal legal system on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. Polling conducted for this report showed that most Australians support raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14.

There has been limited progress since the report’s publication.

Though a 2020 report prepared for the Council of Attorneys-General (CAG) recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 without exceptions, this never made it to CAG for consideration and few jurisdictions have made progress in this direction.

In the jurisdictions that have made progress, these reforms have often been scaled back, accompanied by expanded police powers over children, or may even be reversed.