Youth Justice Bill 2024

This Bill Brief outlines the Youth Justice Bill 2024. Introduced to the Legislative Assembly on 18 June 2024, the Bill aims to replace the current youth justice legislative framework with a new standalone Youth Justice Act.  It proposes significant amendments and changes at each stage of the youth justice process, including frontline response, diversions, sentencing, custodial settings, parole and post-release. Some of the most notable reforms include: raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12 years of age; codifying the doli incapax legal principle; promoting diversionary and restorative justice; and introducing a trial of electronic monitoring. 

The Bill comes amid a recent increase in recorded youth offending, with the Government attributing responsibility to a small cohort of recidivist offenders. The Bill also aims to address the historical over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the justice system and embed Aboriginal self-determination throughout all aspects of the youth justice system. 

This Bill Brief summarises the background to the Bill’s introduction and outlines some recent data on youth offending. The paper also provides an outline of the Bill’s main provisions and themes. Finally, it discusses the significant stakeholder responses to the Bill and some of its major provisions, together with a jurisdictional comparison of Australian state and territory youth justice approaches.