If the Northern Territory government shifts bail out of reach of repeat young offenders it will breach its human rights obligations to children, Amnesty International says.
NT Chief Minister Adam Giles announced on Facebook this week he had "had enough" of young people repeatedly breaking into houses and stealing, and the government aimed to push legislation through parliament next week.
"It's a massive human rights concern and just the wrong way of going about things," Amnesty spokesman Julian Cleary told AAP on Friday.
"There's so much potential for harm... for (this) to really backfire and lead to kids committing even more serious crimes and becoming further entrenched in that system from an early age."
Prison should be a last resort, according to the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child, and jailing kids before they had appeared in court to answer charges "is clearly not a last resort", he said.
"They should only be refused bail if they're a serious flight risk or a serious danger to the community or themselves," Mr Cleary said.
There had been "massive systemic problems" at Darwin's Don Dale youth detention centre, he said: "Kids are getting more and more hardened as a result of being there and there's been all sorts of horrible allegations of abuse against (staff)."
Other jurisdictions had adopted a preventive approach that supported families and identified at-risk children to keep them from committing crimes in the first place, which had reduced crime rates and improved community safety.
The government had said most offences were being committed by a small group of youths. Rather than creating a law to deal with a dozen children, the government had the capacity to manage them on a case-by-case basis, Mr Cleary said.
The NT has the highest rate of youth incarceration in Australia.
The NT's Children's Commissioner, Bar Association, Criminal Lawyer's Association, North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency and Australian Lawyers for Human Rights have all spoken out against the proposal.
The NT's Speaker, Independent Kezia Purick, said Mr Giles was under pressure in his electorate in Alice Springs to crack down on crime.
"It's one thing to be tough on crime... it's another thing to be a political opportunist," she said.
"If there's a personal agenda here, like `I want to try to get re-elected', this is not the way to make policy or legislation."
