Controversy surrounding the incoming Northern Territory government's decision to lower the age of criminal responsibility continues, with the peak body for Aboriginal children and young people the latest organisation to condemn the decision.
Despite the medical consensus being the age should be 14 at a minimum - backed up by peak Indigenous, legal and human rights groups - the CLP, who swept to a landslide election victory over the weekend, vowed to lower the age to 10 during their election campaign.
This promise was repeated on Monday by Chief Minister-elect Lia Finocchiaro, who told reporters tougher penalties for people convicted of crimes are needed.
"That's why we're lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 so that young people can be held accountable and that appropriate consequences for their age are delivered, such as boot camps," she said.
Speaking on ABC News Breakfast on Tuesday morning, chief executive of SNAICC - National Voice for Our Children, Catherine Liddle, criticised the decision, noting: "Your heart sinks, your stomach sinks, and the hard work kicks in".
"At 10, you are just a child," Ms Liddle said. "The evidence had long shown, and again it was a royal commission that unearthed it in the Northern Territory, that the conditions in detention centres were absolutely inhumane."
"And those findings have been backed up by reports right across the country to say conditions in detention centres actually do very little to work on the rehabilitation of the child and protection of the child.
"In actual fact, children come out more harmed than when they went in."
Along with lowering the age, Ms Finocchiaro advocated earlier this year to bring back spit hoods in youth detention and to enact "Declan's Law", whereby offenders categorised as violent are automatically remanded to jail with a presumption against bail.
Currently, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 14-17 are incarcerated at a higher rate in the NT than anywhere else in the country, whilst the latest Closing the Gap data saw eight metrics failing to improve - the worst jurisdiction in the country.
Ms Liddle said many of the children who are coming into contact with child detention centres are some of the most vulnerable in the country.
"These are not children that have food to eat at night," she said.
"These are not children that know they've got shoes to put on. These are not children who have really safe beds to sleep in.
"These are children that are doing it really, really tough. So when they come into those detention centres, when they come into contact with the juvenile justice system, the outcomes are not good."
Ms Liddle's comments reiterated those of AMA President Professor Steve Robson, who last week said: "Incarceration harms children mentally and impairs their physical development. Most children in prison already come from backgrounds that are disadvantaged. These children often experience violence, abuse, disability, homelessness, and drug or alcohol misuse."
In a report released last week, Australia's National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollond's said the incarceration of children as young as ten is one of the most urgent human rights issues facing Australia today.
"Tragically, by not addressing their [children's] human rights early on, and instead taking a punitive approach to their offending, we are essentially criminalising some of the most vulnerable children in Australia," Commissioner Hollond's said.
Ms Liddle said evidence showed children were more likely to offend and more likely to never break the cycle, the younger they are.
"What the evidence doesn't show is that detention, juvenile detention for the ages 10 to 14, has any impact on community safety or reducing crime," Ms Liddle said.
