Australia: Children Suffering Under Criminal Legal System
What was at stake
Youth justice
What happened
Children as young as 10 years old in Australia are currently held criminally responsible and incarcerated in most jurisdictions, a practice Human Rights Watch identifies as a pressing human rights concern. This lack of progress on raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility means that children continue to be tried as adults and imprisoned, despite international standards recommending a minimum age of at least 14. Instances of mistreatment include children being locked up in adult prisons, placed in solitary confinement for extended periods, and tragically, some have died in youth detention.
What the court decided
See summary
Statutes and cases cited
- § UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Categories
Authoritative link
This is a research and reference resource, not legal advice. Summaries are prepared from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always read the original judgment or document and consult a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction before acting.
Narrative summaries on this page are licensed CC BY-NC 4.0. Reuse them with attribution to JusticeHub for non-commercial purposes. Original judgments and source documents remain under their own terms; follow the authoritative link for the source of record.