The NSW government must raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 and embrace community-led solutions, the state's leading Indigenous legal organisation said on Friday.

This week saw two reports released showing young children appearing in NSW courts are overwhelmingly from disadvantaged backgrounds and often Indigenous.

They come in the wake of the Victorian government's U-turn on their promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 in line with medical consensus, ostensibly arguing the decision was made to help alleviate youth crime.

The data from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research showed legal proceedings were taken against 4662 people aged between 10 to 13 years-of-age in 2023 —41.3 per cent were Indigenous.

The data showed children in remote and regional areas are more than three times more likely to see legal proceedings instigated against them and of the 171 children aged 10-13 in youth detention in NSW, 60 per cent were Aboriginal.

Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT chief executive Karly Warner said the state was going backwards on their Closing the Gap commitment in incarceration.

Closing the Gap data from the productivity commission showed Indigenous youth incarceration has risen in 2022-23, with Indigenous children and young people incarcerated at more than 19 times the rate of non-Indigenous children.

"This is what happens when governments prioritise policing, imprisonment and punishment instead of listening to [the] best evidence about the solutions that actually work," Ms Warner said.

Other concerning data included Aboriginal adults now make up 31 per cent of people in NSW prison, despite comprising 3.2 per cent of the state's population, and a "disturbingly high proportion of adults and children" in remand without being found guilty, including 79 per cent of Aboriginal young people in custody.

"It's critical that we turn this around for children because we know locking up kids makes communities more dangerous," Ms Warner said.

"All the evidence shows that putting a child in custody makes future crime and imprisonment much more likely. So why is NSW locking kids up instead of investing in the community-based solutions that have been proven to prevent crime in the first place?"

ALS were highly critical of an announcement earlier this year by the NSW government to enact stricter bail laws, despite admitting it would likely see more children incarcerated.

The laws were even attacked by members of the Labor party themselves but were nonetheless passed at the recent state conference.

Legal practitioners, community workers, academics and Aboriginal organisations said the decision by Premier Chris Minns was a betrayal of the Closing the Gap commitments he signed earlier this year to work with Indigenous communities.

In the wake of the latest data, the ALS called on the NSW government to "recommit" to working in partnership with Indigenous organisations to help close the gap.

"There is still time for government to find the courage to do things differently," Ms Warner said.

"Communities have the solutions, but government needs to be willing to listen and act."