Across Australia, a quiet crisis has been unfolding inside detention facilities where, on any given day, nearly two in three children behind bars are Indigenous — a disparity more than twenty-five times the rate of their non-Indigenous peers. A parliamentary inquiry has brought this reality into sharp relief, with legal experts arguing the federal government holds constitutional authority to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility yet has chosen not to exercise it. The question before the nation is not merely one of law or jurisdiction, but of moral will: whether those with the power
PM urged to show leadership as Indigenous youth detention crisis deepens
Indigenous children as young as 10 are being detained in conditions described as regressive and dangerous, with the majority unsentenced and spending weeks to months in custody before trial.