The Victorian Labor government says it will \u201cdo everything\u201d it can to \u201ctoughen consequences\u201d for young offenders after police withdrew 109 charges against a 14-year-old girl, in a case the opposition described as proof \u201cthe justice system is broken\u201d.<\/p>\n
The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had been facing 109 charges, including reckless conduct endangering serious injury, motor vehicle theft and burglary, after an alleged two-month crime spree earlier this year when she was aged 13.<\/p>\n
But Victoria police on Thursday confirmed the charges were dropped in court on Wednesday due to their concerns around the doli incapax rule<\/a> \u2013 a legal presumption that states a child under 14 can only be convicted of a crime if prosecutors can prove they understood what they did was seriously wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cThe charges were withdrawn because the police prosecution was unable to rebut the legal presumption that a child aged 13 and under is incapable of committing a criminal offence,\u201d a police spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a high legal threshold that requires the prosecution to prove the child knew their conduct was seriously morally wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n A children\u2019s court previously heard the girl was allegedly offending an average of 1.45 times a day over a period of 74 days. On 30 March, she was allegedly behind the wheel of a stolen car that rammed into a 45-year-old cyclist in Brighton, in Melbourne\u2019s south-east, knocking him to the ground and causing a brain bleed.<\/p>\n Within three minutes of the incident, she Googled \u201chow long the sentence is for running someone over\u201d, the court heard.<\/p>\n The girl was also accused of shouting antisemitic remarks at pedestrians in Caulfield, Hampton and Ripponlea, and allegedly swerving a car towards a Jewish family while behind the wheel, also in Ripponlea.<\/p>\n Police had told the court she had also searched \u201cwhere do Jews live\u201d and had gone \u201cout of her way\u201d to target the community.<\/p>\n In their statement on Thursday, police said they \u201cunderstand the concern these incidents have caused in the community, especially for members of the Jewish community\u201d.<\/p>\n Liberal MP David Southwick, whose electorate of Caulfield is home to the state\u2019s largest Jewish population, said the case proved there was \u201cno justice system in Victoria\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOur justice system is broken and this is another example of it. Particularly at the time when we\u2019ve got a royal commission looking at antisemitism, we have a situation where a young person is let off for going around hunting Jews, trying to Google where they live,\u201d Southwick, said.<\/p>\n He said it was \u201ccompletely ridiculous\u201d the girl was able to \u201cGoogle the punishment but be too young to fit the punishment\u201d.<\/p>\n Neither the premier, Jacinta Allan<\/a>, or the attorney general, Sonya Kilkenny, would speak to the specifics of the case on Thursday. But Allan said the behaviour was \u201cunacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n She said the state government had introduced tougher bail<\/a> and \u201cadult time for violent crime\u201d laws<\/a> and created the violence reduction unit<\/a> to respond to the \u201cchanged pattern of behaviour\u201d by youth offenders.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing more brazen, more violent behaviour that was just unthinkable even a few years ago,\u201d Allan said.<\/p>\n Kilkenny said she would do \u201ceverything to toughen consequences for young offenders\u201d.<\/p>\n But asked whether she would consider reforming the doli incapax threshold, Kilkenny said: \u201cI won\u2019t be responding to that with any announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n The NSW Labor government made major changes to doli incapax last year<\/a> and this week, the Tasmanian Liberal government said it was considering following suit<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Victorian Labor government says it will \u201cdo everything\u201d it can to \u201ctoughen consequences\u201d for young offenders after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-670135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}