Victorian inquiry finds 12 of 26 children were remanded before turning 14, most never sentenced

The Commission for Children and Young People, Victoria's statutory oversight body for children, tabled a systemic inquiry report in both houses of the Victorian Parliament on 30 July 2026 which found that twelve of the twenty six children whose files it reviewed had been held in youth justice custody on remand before they turned 14, and that at least half of those twelve were never sentenced for anything at all.

The report, "With us, not against us: A systemic inquiry to learn from the experiences of children who entered the criminal justice system before 14", runs to 146 pages and was tabled under section 50 of the Commission for Children and Young People Act 2012, following a request dated 9 July 2026 signed by Principal Commissioner Tracy Beaton and by Dallas Widdicombe, the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People.

The central evidence is a file review of 26 children who were under Youth Justice supervision in 2023-24 and 2024-25 for offences, or alleged offences, committed when they were under 14. The Commission states that this represented 96 per cent of all children in that cohort, closer to a census than a sample. All 26 were boys. Twenty seven per cent identified as Aboriginal and 42 per cent came from multicultural backgrounds. Files and departmental data indicated that 88 per cent lived with disability.

The custody findings are the sharpest part of the document. Across six years of data, from 2019-20 to 2024-25, the Commission found that no child under 14 was sentenced to a custodial order in Victoria. Yet twelve of the 26 children experienced remand before turning 14, averaging 3.7 episodes of remand, 17 days per episode and 61 days in total. One child spent close to a year in custody altogether, across eleven separate episodes of remand. At least half of the twelve received no sentence, either because the doli incapax presumption applied or because charges were withdrawn or dismissed. Fifteen of the 26 children experienced isolation while in custody, recording 530 episodes of behavioural isolation, 2,509 security isolations or lockdowns and fifteen episodes of self isolation between January 2023 and June 2025.

The report also documents what happened long before police did. Child Protection had been involved with all 26 children, receiving 250 reports over the course of their lives. Twenty three children were the subject of four or more reports, twelve of ten or more, and one child of twenty. Over half, 58 per cent, were the subject of a report before turning five, and more than a third before turning one. Family violence was the most common protective concern, appearing in 122 reports, close to one in every two. Of the 229 closed reports, 59 per cent were closed at the intake stage, meaning the department assessed the harm as not serious enough to investigate.

Schooling tells a similar story. The children recorded an average school absence rate of 79 per cent since 2022 and an average suspension rate of 27 per cent a year between 2019 and 2025, against a statewide average of three per cent. Nineteen of the 26 had lived in out of home care, twelve of them in residential care. Seventy five per cent went on to further alleged offending after turning 14.

Recommendation 12 of the report's fifteen recommendations asks the Victorian Government to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 14 without exceptions, and says that until that happens no child under 14 should be held in youth justice custody. Victoria raised the minimum age from 10 to 12 but did not proceed to 14, a decision the Principal Commissioner describes in the report as a significant missed opportunity.

The national context is not disputed, though the emphasis differs by source. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported on 12 May 2026 that 4,147 young people aged 10 and over were under youth justice supervision on an average day in 2024-25, that 81 per cent of them were supervised in the community, and that 56 per cent of those aged 10 to 17 under supervision were First Nations. It records that five per cent of young people in detention were aged 10 to 13. The Productivity Commission, reporting on 29 January 2026, put national recurrent spending on youth justice at 1.7 billion dollars in 2024-25, a real increase of 8.7 per cent, with detention accounting for 66.2 per cent of it. Jesuit Social Services, in a statement of 31 July 2026 arguing against expanded mandatory sentencing, cited figures that more than 60 per cent of children in detention are victims of abuse, neglect or trauma. The Commission's own May 2026 statement on its Independent Visitor Program was blunter about the centres themselves, with Beaton saying conditions are variable and there is a long way to go.

What is not yet known is what the government will do. The report contains no government response, and none had been published at the time of writing. Nor does the inquiry establish a counterfactual: with 26 children and no comparison group, it cannot show what would have happened to the same children had they never been remanded. The four per cent of the cohort excluded from the file review is not accounted for. And the report does not say how many children aged 12 and 13 are currently remanded in Victoria, describing the number only as very small.