Email your local MP | Worth A Second Chance

Email your local MP

1,502 emails

We are asking Australians to join with us to call for the age of legal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 14. We believe young people are Worth A Second Chance.

Send a message to your lower and upper house MPs and join the campaign via the form below.

Find your local rep

Subject:

I write to you as a concerned member of the community and a supporter of the Worth A Second Chance campaign for more fair, humane and effective youth justice systems.

Momentum is building across Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility: an evidence-based and compassionate reform that would make a real difference in the lives of young people on the margins.

For years, Australia languished behind the rest of the world in supporting these young people. Every state and territory could arrest, charge and imprison 10-year-old-children – subjecting them to the isolation and harm of the prison system, which high reoffending rates demonstrate to be ineffective, and increasing their likelihood of offending into adulthood.

I believe children belong in playgrounds, not prison. I’m glad to see strong leadership from governments who agree: the Northern Territory has raised the age of criminal responsibility to 12, the Australian Capital Territory will soon follow suit, and Victoria has also announced plans to raise the age. I welcome and encourage this reform.

But we can, and must, do better.

Medical experts and United Nations human rights standards agree the minimum age of criminal responsibility must be 14. Experts agree younger children have not developed the social, emotional and intellectual maturity necessary for legal responsibility. Simply locking up vulnerable young children, rather than addressing their behaviour, starts a cycle of incarceration that is hard to break.

Children who come into contact with the youth legal system are likely to have faced a tough start to life. I believe the most effective approach to prevent these children’s trajectories into the legal system is to address the issues driving their vulnerability, including family dysfunction, trauma, abuse and neglect.

Prison should always be used only as a last resort and that children must have every possible opportunity to be diverted away from prison and connected to school, their families and community.

We cannot wait any longer. I urge governments across Australia to raise the age of legal responsibility to 14 years, and put in place restorative responses that work with families, schools and communities to support – rather than punish – vulnerable children.

Jesuit Social Services’ discussion paper on this topic outlines a range of practical ways in which children can be held to account for their actions and supported to reset their lives: https://jss.org.au/articles/raising-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility-there-is-a-better-way/

All children are worth a second chance – which is why I call on you, as my local representative in Parliament, to please represent these concerns.

How we use the data you enter on this form

Please see www.jss.org.au/privacy for information on how we will protect and manage data collected as part of this campaign.

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?