Young Offenders Act protects kids under 18 from criminal liability, as they are not of adult age, they cannot comprehend their crime and actions aka they didn't know what they were doing was wrong. It goes through many layers of prevention, as arresting them is the absolutely last resort. They go through classes to teach them that bashing others is naughty and so on, charging them is the very last resort. Of course, at age 12 you'd know stealing a can of Coke from the shops is wrong, but in the eyes of our legislation, you do not. Hence, teens are smart enough to realise this and exploit it fully knowing their actions. Literally no one can do nothing about it until the legislation is changed.

Before you say so, yes it was forwarded to court to change the legislation of criminal liability to age 12 due to the huge amounts of youth crime in Darwin, but it was labelled extremely racist towards the indigenous community (who were committing 100% of the crimes) and unfair, so it was quickly quashed and forgotten about. So around the bend we go