The Guardian view on the age of criminal responsibility: raise it now
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Version 0 of 1. Editorial: By criminalising children at a lower age than any other EU country, the UK shows itself to be stuck in the past The number of 10-year-olds cautioned or convicted of crimes in England and Wales has fallen steeply, from 710 in 2010 to 47 last year. This forms part of a bigger trend that has seen arrests of children fall from 200,000 in 2011 to 87,000 in 2016, and the child custody population decline from 2,541 a decade ago to 830 in May this year (all but 33 of them boys). These figures mark a significant improvement in the approach to young people taken by the police and criminal justice system – mirroring similar changes in Scotland. Since evidence overwhelmingly shows that contact with the police, courts and prisons is harmful to children, finding other ways to deal with them is preferable. But praise for the campaigners and professionals responsible for this overhaul must be tempered by an awareness of the ways in which the system has got worse. Last week’s Guardian investigation of youth courts has highlighted the impact of cuts and closures, including wholly unacceptable delays that leave children in limbo, and the rising proportion of children convicted of crimes who are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. From 14% in 2010, that figure has almost doubled to 27%. Meanwhile, the youth reoffending rate has risen, and at 40.9% in 2017 was more than 10 percentage points higher than for adult criminals over 21. Against this backdrop, combined with continued and serious dysfunction in the youth prison sector, raising the age of criminal responsibility might not appear to be the most urgent priority. But along with measures (and funding) to limit delays and tackle institutional racism, increasing the age at which children can be arrested and charged with a crime from 10 to 14 – perhaps in two stages, as recommended by the children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield – is one of the most important steps that should now be taken. With 12 regarded as the lowest acceptable age by the UN and other international bodies, and 10 the lowest age in any EU country, the UK’s criminalisation of primary-school-aged children is a national disgrace. A Scottish bill to raise the age there from eight to 12 is in progress, and regarded as a disappointment by children’s rights campaigners because it does not go far enough (the age of criminal responsibility is 14 in Germany, 15 in Sweden and 16 in Portugal). In the House of Commons, a private member’s bill raising the age to 12 was suspended ahead of last month’s Queen’s speech. The head of the youth justice board, Charlie Taylor, and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services are among those who believe that such a change is long overdue. Such a move would of course require a measure of political courage. But the public as well as professionals have moved on while the law has not. The age of criminal responsibility has been 10 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since the 1960s. When the law was toughened in 1998 to remove the principle of doli incapax, which required prosecutors to prove that children under 14 understood the difference between what was wrong and what was naughty, it was in the overheated aftermath of James Bulger’s murder. More than 20 years on, children should not be suffering the societal consequences of a crime that took place before they were born. All parties should now commit to legislation that takes account of contemporary knowledge both of the impact of adverse early experiences on children, and the science of their developing brains. That children whom the law forbids from buying a pet or a lottery ticket are treated as criminally responsible is an affront not just to them, but to us all. |