Raise The Age

Right now, most governments across Australia put children as young as 10 in jail.

The minimum age of criminal responsibility must be raised to at least 14, with no exceptions. This is backed up by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee Against Torture, neuroscientists, and legal and medical experts.

The Commonwealth Government has the constitutional power to make this change.

Children need to be met with therapeutic responses, not punishment and cruelty.

Use our easy email tool to email the Attorney-General and urge them to act now.

Right now, most governments across Australia put children as young as 10 in jail.

The minimum age of criminal responsibility must be raised to at least 14, with no exceptions. This is backed up by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee Against Torture, neuroscientists, and legal and medical experts.

The Commonwealth Government has the constitutional power to make this change.

Children need to be met with therapeutic responses, not punishment and cruelty.

Use our easy email tool to email the Attorney-General and urge them to act now.

Email the Federal Attorney-General

Where do you live?

Compose your email

Name

Email

Subject:

To the Hon. Michelle Rowland, Attorney-General,

I am writing to implore you to commit to urgently raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14, with no exceptions, as part of the introduction of national minimum standards for youth justice in Australia.

The Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee recently released their Final Report from the inquiry into Australia’s youth justice and incarceration system, and the evidence is overwhelming: incarcerating children as young as 10 perpetuates tremendous harm and trauma, and can lead to the ongoing criminalisation of their behaviour.

No child belongs in prison, but the younger a child is when exposed to the criminal legal system, the more likely they are to be trapped in future cycles of criminalisation.

Prisons cannot provide the support, trauma-informed care and services that children need. This is particularly true for children living with disability, who are over-represented in detention centres. Research also shows that most children in detention centres are themselves victims of violence.

Children need to be met with therapeutic responses, not punishment and cruelty.

We know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are over-surveilled by police and over-represented in carceral systems, due to social disadvantage, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. The latest data shows that state and territory governments are 21 times more likely to imprison Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 10–17 than their non-Indigenous peers.

The global minimum standard for the age of criminal responsibility is 14, which is backed up by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee Against Torture, as well as neuroscientists and medical experts who best understand child brain development. Australia is well behind the rest of the world, and is breaching its human rights obligations under international law.

In 2023, 126 organisations called on the Attorney-General to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14.

In June 2025, expert legal advice confirmed that the Commonwealth Government has the constitutional power to legislate for children’s rights reform using section 51 (xxix) of the Constitution in conjunction with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including to raise the age.

In January 2026, forty countries urged Australia to raise the minimum age as part of Australia’s major human rights review.

In September 2026, the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee recommended that you work with your state and territory counterparts to introduce national minimum standards for youth justice in Australia. Raising the age must be part of this.

Doctors, neuroscientists, legal experts, the First Nations community, the health services sector and the United Nations all agree: young children do not belong in prison.

It is time for you, Attorney-General, to listen to the experts and to the communities who know their children best: raise the age to 14, with no exceptions. This is the very least you can do.

How we use the data you enter on this form

Do Gooder (the advocacy platform powering this online action) processes personal information from you that you enter on this form so that we can provide the functions and related services to you and The Campaigner (the organisation responsible for this online action) for their legitimate purposes, including possibly exporting it to other systems, and to effectively respond to enquiries and communications related to those services.

Specifically when you enter:

Your location data (residential address or postcode) it is used to locate your elected representative, to pre-populate your email signature and to provide The Campaigner with a visualisation of the location of the support for this campaign.
All other data you may enter, including your email address, name, telephone number, commentary and so on is used by The Campaigner to advocate for the campaign’s goals and where required may be sent to the target of the campaign.

The data collected by Do Gooder is also used by us in aggregate form to improve the service and may be held on your behalf outside your country of residence by our third party service providers. These providers are bound by contract to only use personal information on our behalf, in accordance with agreed terms. While the privacy laws of the country in which personal information is stored or transferred may be different from those in your country, we will always have safeguards in place when storing or transferring personal information. We will never sell, rent, loan or in any other way pass your information on to other parties other than to provide this service to you and The Campaigner.

The personal information collected by Do Gooder is held subject to a Data Processing Agreement between Do Gooder and The Campaigner in compliance with the EU's GDPR and Australian law.

Learn more about our privacy policy here

How is my data used?