The ACT will make history on Tuesday by becoming the first Australian jurisdiction to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, in line with expert advice.

While other states and territories continue to implement punitive laws that allow children as young as ten — many of them First Nations — to be imprisoned, the ACT's move has been welcomed by advocates and legal experts.

The change, which takes effect on July 1, will include exceptions for serious offences such as murder and certain sexual crimes.

Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, the ACT's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner, praised the reform.

The Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul woman said the evidence shows incarceration neither rehabilitates children nor improves community safety.

She said her office will "closely monitor the implementation of this reform, and how alternative avenues such as therapeutic responses are sought to protect the wellbeing and address the trauma often state-inflicted on the lives of children and young people".

"We must ensure that we do not build outside punitive repostpones and/or confinements, but rather create appropriate supports that build on the strengths of children and young people," Commissioner Turnbull-Roberts added.

Under the new laws, children will be referred to a therapeutic support panel aimed at addressing the underlying causes of their behaviour rather than being sent to prison. Commissioner Turnbull-Roberts emphasised the importance of supporting community-led responses over policing.

"Young people in the ACT are facing significant implications of being profiled, targeted and consistently subject to surveillance by policing," she said.

"We must safeguard all our children and young people and ensure that all our children and young people are supported with early intervention and prevention, this includes culturally safe programs that operate after hours."

Recent Closing the Gap data shows First Nations children remain disproportionately represented in the ACT justice system — reflecting a national trend.

Last week, members of the Australian and New Zealand Children's Commissioners Guardians and Advocates First Nations Caucus urged governments to "finally listen, act, and uphold the rights of the children and young people they are obligated to protect".

The joint statement noted that across the country, "we are witnessing a disturbing erosion of hard-won safeguards – protections grounded in international law – that intended to shield Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from institutional harm".

All Australian governments signed the Closing the Gap agreement in 2020, which aims to reduce the detention rate of Indigenous youth (aged 10–17) by at least 30 per cent by 2031. But several jurisdictions have introduced policies that critics say are likely to widen that gap.

In the Northern Territory, the CLP government has lowered the age of criminal responsibility to ten — a move widely condemned by human rights, medical, legal, and Indigenous organisations. Nearly every child in detention in the NT has experienced family violence, and more than three-quarters have mental health needs or a cognitive disability.

Queensland, which imprisons more Indigenous children than any other state, recently passed "adult crime, adult time" laws that allow children as young as ten to face life sentences — despite acknowledging the laws breach international human rights conventions.

In Victoria, although the age was raised to 12 last year, plans to lift it to 14 by 2027 were scrapped by the Allan government. Less than six months later, new "tough" bail laws were introduced, prompting condemnation from Indigenous legal groups.

National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds told the ABC there was little political will across the country for real reform.

"You can see that all around Australia now, where the age is 10, there are huge problems and unfortunately a lot of governments are really struggling with these issues," she said.

Last year, she told reporters that some politicians had told her there were "no votes in children" when she raised concerns about youth justice reform.

The ACT's reform also comes as the inquest resumes this week into the death of Cleveland Dodd, who was found unresponsive in a cell at Unit 18 — a youth unit inside WA's Casuarina maximum-security adult prison — in October 2023.

Commissioner Hollonds told a Senate inquiry into youth justice in February: "The most chilling thing was when kids had lost all hope… They had no hope but moving to an adult jail.

"Detention, it's a revolving door."

While welcoming the ACT's change, Commissioner Turnbull-Roberts said her office remained concerned about children currently held in youth detention.

"We cannot forget the young people who will remain in custody, held on remand and who will continue to face the serious risk of institutionalisation and pipelining to adult incarceration," she said.

"We must do all we can to ensure no young person inside gets left behind, and that we see reform and practice demonstrate this."