Victoria will be the first state to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12 but the push for further youth justice reform is far from over.
The government has abandoned plans to raise the age to 14 in a policy shift coinciding with a series of high-profile fatalities involving alleged youth offenders.
Fierce debate raged in the state’s upper house until almost 2am on Friday over hundreds of amendments to the 1000-page Youth Justice Bill.
The bill is expected to easily pass the lower house.
Other changes include a trial of electronic monitoring of young people on bail, a new charge of committing a serious offence while on bail and certain crimes highlighted in the Bail Act as posing an unacceptable community risk.
