States and territories in Australia have faced pressure to raise it from 10 to 14, in accordance with UN recommendations and other developed nations.
The NT was the first jurisdiction to raise the age limit to 12 last year, but the newly elected Country Liberal Party (CLP) government in August has stated that a reversal is required to lower the rates of juvenile criminality.
Despite doctors, human rights organizations, and Indigenous communities contesting that reasoning, it has maintained that raising the age back to 10 will eventually safeguard children.
They provide proof that the laws will disproportionately increase crime instead of decreasing it.
Nearly all of the children incarcerated in the NT are Aboriginal, and the rate is already eleven times greater than that of any other jurisdiction in the nation.
The NT city of Alice Springs has implemented a number of youth curfews in response to a series of violent occurrences this year, and numerous locations throughout Australia have declared themselves to be experiencing a youth crime epidemic.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro claimed that her government had been given a mandate following their resounding election victory and that the change would enable courts to place juvenile offenders in programs intended to address the underlying causes of their crimes, which are most frequently assault and break-in offenses based on statistics.
