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Adult crime, adult time: Responsibilities can’t come without rights
Adult crime, adult time.
There it is. The perfect four-word slogan, tailor-made for a modern political campaign.
It’s repetitive, it’s alliterative, it rhymes and it’s repetitive.
We all need to fully appreciate what “adult crime, adult time” means.Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain
But beyond the messaging mastery, the LNP’s keystone youth crime policy for next month’s state election opens the door to a philosophical question that is harder to answer than one might think – what, exactly, is an adult?
The legal definition, in Australia at least, is pretty clear. It’s someone who has orbited the sun at least 18 times. When you’re 17 years and 364 days old, you’re not an adult.
Come midnight, you’re suddenly a fully formed human being, at least in the eyes of the law. You are now bestowed with all the rights and responsibilities that come with adulthood.
It’s arbitrary and it ignores the individual rates of physical and mental maturing we all go through. Some 15-year-olds could certainly be considered more emotionally “adult” than some 24-year-olds, for example.
But the law is the law, and the law says 18.
So what happens when we, as a society, start to tinker around the edges of that legal definition and bestow adult responsibilities upon a child’s young shoulders?
If history is any guide, we change the definition of “adult”.
When our federal government, to its eternal shame, gave kids guns and sent them to fight someone else’s war in the jungles of Vietnam, thousands of them under the age of 21 were not even considered adults.
They could die in their country’s name, but they couldn’t enjoy a beer at their local. Nor could they vote.
It was outrageous. After all, if your country compels you through a heartlessly barbaric process of conscription to make the ultimate sacrifice, the very least it can do is give you a say in that country is run.
And so the Commonwealth Electoral Bill 1973 passed with bipartisan support, and a generation of baby boomers were able to have their say at the ballot box.
Which brings us back to adult crime, adult time.
Getting tough on young offenders is an understandably popular position and, honestly, in some circumstances can be a hard position to argue against.
There are examples of young offenders whose crimes are so heinous, their effects so far-reaching, that society naturally flinches and demands a fair and just punishment.
And there will always be some young crims who use their age as an immunity blanket. But there will also be many who just need some help getting on the right track.
So let’s look at the other side of this coin: if you’re old enough to be criminally responsible, surely you’re old enough to be civically responsible.
Brisbane Greens MP Steven Bates has led the most recent push to lower the voting age to 16.
“Sixteen- and 17-year-olds can drive cars, work, enlist in the Australian Defence Force, and serve their communities, yet they have no say in the composition of their own government,” he rightly pointed out.
“Students are taking to the streets in their thousands to demand action on the climate crisis. They have no other choice. They’re being left out of the critical decisions that impact them, and [they] want their voices to be heard.”
I tend to agree.
If we’re willing to avail the full force of the adult judicial responsibility on the bad eggs among our youth, we can surely expand suffrage to be more inclusive and invite them into the process.