Labor defends youth crime policy as 109 charges against teen dropped

The state government has vowed to “do everything” to strengthen punishments for teenagers who commit serious offences after a 14-year-old girl had more than 100 charges against her dropped because she was found to have been legally too young to understand her conduct was wrong.

The girl was facing 109 charges over an alleged crime spree in which she was accused of targeting the Jewish community, including nearly running down a Jewish family in a stolen car and intentionally hitting a cyclist using a car door.

On Wednesday, police withdrew charges against the girl, who was aged 13 at the time of her alleged offending. A Victoria Police spokesperson noted the prosecution was unable to rebut the legal presumption that children aged 13 and younger are incapable of committing a criminal offence.

In Victoria, children aged under 12 cannot be arrested, charged or held in detention, and children aged 12 or 13 can only be held criminally responsible if prosecutors can prove they knew their actions were wrong.

“This is a high legal threshold that requires the prosecution to prove the child knew their conduct was seriously morally wrong,” the spokesperson said, adding that Victoria Police understood these incidents caused concern for the Jewish community.

News Corp reported that police told a court hearing the girl had Googled “how long is the sentence for running someone over” three minutes after allegedly striking the cyclist, and had also searched “Where do Jews live”.

Premier Jacinta Allan said on Thursday that the girl’s alleged behaviour “is far from in line with community expectations”, but added she was not aware of the specifics of the case.

“It’s why we’ve toughened the bail laws,” Allan said. “It’s why we’ve introduced adult time for violent crime.”

After coming under attack from the state opposition and facing rising community concern over the rate of youth offending, Labor introduced its “adult time for violent crime” policy aimed at cracking down on young criminals. The move was designed to reduce the frequency of teenagers being bailed by courts and impose harsher sentences on youths convicted of crimes.

The government tried to balance the move by establishing its Violence Reduction Unit, a program aimed at early intervention with at-risk young people to steer them away from crime.

Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny said on Thursday that it would be inappropriate to comment on the specific case, but that Labor was taking action on youth crime.

“I will do everything to toughen consequences for young offenders to deal with the new types of offending that we have seen,” she said.

“And I will do everything with the work of the Violence Reduction Unit to make sure that we are getting to these younger and younger children, that we’re supporting communities, we’re supporting families to ensure that these children are stopped from going down the criminal justice pathway.”

Questioned on whether a 13-year-old was criminally responsible for their actions, Kilkenny said: “In some cases, yes, you will be responsible for those actions. In other cases, you may not be.

“We are talking about different circumstances, which is why it is so important not to pull out individual cases, but look to the system as a whole and go, ‘What do we need to do to address this very serious, different type of offending that we are now seeing?’”

Deputy Liberal leader David Southwick, who is Jewish, said it was appalling the girl had been fit to Google the punishment for allegedly striking the cyclist but not considered fit to stand trial.

“We have a situation where a young person is let off for going around hunting Jews, trying to Google where they live – shows that the system is broken,” he said.

“The government should be looking in their own backyard when it comes to tackling antisemitism, not allow a young person on 109 charges on bail, running down somebody on a bike, then being let off scot-free. That doesn’t pass the pub test.”

Labor under former premier Daniel Andrews had pledged to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 14, but in August 2024 Allan walked away from the promise after a series of high-profile youth crimes.

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