Australia’s Criminal Justice Crackdown on Kids Recognised in Global Report

In its annual assessment of human rights practices in over 100 countries in 2024, Human Rights Watch drew attention to this nation’s reversals of the rights of children in its criminal justice system, which last year saw something of a nationwide law-and-order crackdown upon kids.

HRW asserts that whilst Australia protects citizens’ rights, its record “is marred by some key human rights concerns”, which include “its treatment of children in the criminal justice system”, as authorities have subjected those in detention “to harsh conditions, including solitary confinement” and in Queensland and Western Australia, kids “were incarcerated in facilities designed for adults”.

Queensland launched its rights-eroding crackdown on youth in 2023, when it twice suspended its Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld) to pass a breach of bail offence and to ensure it is lawful to detain kids in adult watchhouses, while the Northern Territory last year lifted a ban on spit hoods being used on kids and adults, while it too lowered the age of criminal responsibility back down from 12 to 10.

But 2024 was further notable as the southern states of New South Wales and Victoria both launched youth crime crackdowns in a manner that is usually reserved for the north of the country, and only over recent days has South Australia begun decrying a “youth crime wave” within its borders.

Published on 21 January, the World Report 2025 further highlights the rights violations that have been occurring in the notorious youth justice system in WA, and the HRW report too notes that a youth crime crackdown in the nation of Australia disproportionately targets Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Kiddie incarceration nation

“On any given day, about 700 children ages 10 to 17 are detained or imprisoned across Australia,” World Report 2025 explains. “First Nations children make up approximately 60 percent of the prison population.”

“Most Australian states maintain an age of criminal responsibility below the UN recommended minimum of at least 14 years,” it continues. “In New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, children as young as 10 can be held criminally responsible and incarcerated.”

The age of criminal responsibility is the age at which a child is deemed to have reached a stage of development that means they’re capable of committing a crime and therefore, punishable for it. The UN recommends the age is set at 14 years, which is in line with the research on child development, but Australia, more or less, has kept it at the distinctly low 10 years of age.

HRW points out that in August 2024, Victoria determined not to raise the age from 10 to 14 but only to 12, where it now sits, while the NT last year lowered the age from 12 back down to its original setting of 10.

The international human rights organisation further called out Queensland on its ongoing practice of locking up kids in adult watchhouses, where these children are often detained for weeks on end, despite cells only being designed for short-term use.

“In Western Australia, authorities detained children in Unit 18, a wing of the maximum-security Casuarina Prison,” the World Report adds. “In September, a 17-year-old boy died by suicide in Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Western Australia. This child had previously been held in Unit 18, where he reportedly endured ‘routine solitary confinement’.”

Locking up children is preferred

The Minns government launched its response to a regional “youth crime wave” in NSW in March 2024, that saw a law ensuring 14- to 17-year-olds caught committing serious motor theft and break and enter crimes whilst on conditional release remanded, while a new offence of performance crime ensures that those bragging about their crimes online receive up to 2 additional years in gaol.

The Victorian Allan government determined last August that the initial lifting of the criminal age from 10 to 12 in April 2023 is where it will remain, despite an earlier pledge to raise it to 14, and she implemented a new bail regime that sees youths that commit a range of serious criminal offences being refused bail.

But the major crackdowns on children who break the law, and in particular First Nations youths, happened in the north of the country, as a result of the Country Liberals taking out the NT election in August and the Liberal Nationals securing office in Queensland in October.

Along with reinstating the use of potentially lethal spit hoods in watchhouses for youths and dropping the age, the NT Finocchiaro ministry has reinstated youth breach of bail and a presumption against bail regime for both youths and adults, which is being implemented in a jurisdiction that has a child prisoner population that’s always comprised of at least 90 percent Aboriginal kids.

The Crisafulli government was too looking back to its colonial roots, when it enacted its Making Queensland Safer laws in December. These included measures to ensure youths serve the same time in gaol for certain crimes as do adults, and the government removed measures that maintained prison as a punishment of last resort and that its preferable for kids to serve time in the community.

The incarcerating itch

The HRW report further pointed to a mid-2024 report by National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds, which outlined that the treatment of children in detention is one of the most urgent human rights issues in this country. Yet, while official investigations and international bodies have repeatedly raised the need for reform, Australian governments refuse to progress any.

Global attention was drawn to the state of Australian child prisons due to the mid-2016 airing of the Four Corners documentary Australia’s Shame, as it revealed adult “youth justice officers” in Darwin’s former Don Dale youth gaol torturing and teargassing child detainees.

Sixty three percent of minors in Australian detention in June 2023 were First Nations children, while Indigenous youths aged 10 to 17 only make up 5.7 percent of those aged 10 to 17 in the general population. And this disproportionate incarceration of Aboriginal children is standard in Australia, and while it’s not always mentioned in the media reports, it is implied.

Indeed, the go-to example of another developed settler colonial nation with a violent disposition towards locking up Indigenous youths is the state of Israel and its mass incarceration of Palestinian youths.