By Rachel Eddie and Broede Carmody
Serious repeat young offenders will be less likely to get bail and aggravated burglary will be treated more harshly under a crackdown to stem community concerns about violent youth crime.
Premier Jacinta Allan on Monday said further steps to meet community concern would be announced “very soon”, and is expected to reveal changes on Tuesday to the government’s 1000-page youth justice bill that is already before Victorian parliament.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on Monday.Credit: AAP
The changes come as the government goes soft on raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
Two sources familiar with negotiations, unable to speak publicly, said the government would bring amendments to make it harder for a child repeatedly accused of a serious offence to receive bail and that bail would be easier to revoke.
Aggravated burglary would be made a crime against the person under the proposed amendments, they said, a reform that was favoured by law enforcement during stakeholder consultations. Property crimes are not taken as seriously as crimes against the person by courts when considering bail.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton had intervened in negotiations with the government, one source said. The Victorian government was contacted for comment.
In July, Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said the revocation of bail would be up for discussion when she met representatives of Victoria Police, the courts and the youth justice sector.
She said at the time that bail often benefited community safety by keeping children out of the justice system and reducing their risk of reoffending, but that this worked only if rules were followed. Symes said the tests for providing bail were clear but that there was less guidance on when to revoke bail.
Allan also sat down with stakeholders last month, but the government has since dithered on its plans, which were expected to be announced weeks ago.
“We know we need to do more,” Allan said on Monday.
“We need to take further steps to both address concerns in the community around community safety, [and address] what we are seeing with a group of young people who are engaging in repeat, serious, risky, risky behaviour.
“We’re open to considering all options that are available to us.”
The government had already cut plans to make it easier for children to receive bail out of broader bail reform last year. These changes were then going to be included in the standalone youth justice bill, but the commitment was dumped in March, incensing Aboriginal and human rights advocates.
At the time, Symes said that change wasn’t needed because young people were already demonstrating they should be released on bail.
The government instead announced it would trial putting ankle bracelets on 50 young offenders.
The youth justice bill, which will be debated in the upper house this week, also proposes to boost the capacity of the Children’s Court and provide youth supervision orders. If passed, it would raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12.
The government has spent months softening the ground to abandon its commitment to further raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 by 2027, emphasising this was always subject to the establishment of an alternative service model. The second stage of raising the age is not part of the current bill.
Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight called on the government to keep its promise, and Human Rights Law Centre associate legal director Monique Hurley said abandoning the commitment would be a failure to uphold the rights of children.
“Pipelining more children into youth prisons does not make the community safer,” Hurley said.
Two ministers have told The Age the policy was at risk of being dropped. While support was still there internally, there was a sense the government had lost control of the narrative and that proceeding could leave Labor exposed during the 2026 election campaign.
Three Labor MPs said youth crime was coming up as a concern when they door-knocked their local communities.
Another conceded the government had failed to manage the narrative but insisted the pressure was coming from police and the media, not the electorate.
“No one is contacting my office about youth crime,” the MP said. “What they’re talking about is cost of living.”
Opposition Leader John Pesutto said Labor was in “utter chaos” over its youth justice bill.
“The Allan Labor government is rushing to create amendments to this,” Pesutto said. “They don’t know what they want to do.”
The Coalition opposes raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 and wants more investment in early intervention programs for at-risk youth.
Without the opposition, the government will have to rely on support from six crossbench MPs in the upper house to pass its youth justice bill.
The Greens support parts of the bill, but say failing to raise the age to 14 would be a betrayal of First Nations communities.
Victorian Commissioner for Children and Young People Liana Buchanan has previously warned against implementing knee-jerk or simplistic responses to concern about youth crime.
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