The Wire

The NSW Liberals are proposing changes to the juvenile justice system, that will hold children as young as 10, responsible for their crimes. Under the current legal system in Australia, children aged10 to 14 are subjected to doli incapax. That means that they cannot be held responsible for committing crimes, if the court found that they weren’t able to understand that their actions were wrong. Critics of these reforms say that the intellectual and moral development of children at that group age is at a different level to that of adult, and therefore cannot be held responsible in the criminal justice system, just like adults.