Why Australia needs to raise the criminal age of responsibility to 14

[danieldemol]

‘The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended the laws of member states be changed to ensure that children under the age of 16 can't legally be imprisoned.

It also recommended governments raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 - an increase from its previous position of 12 years old.

The new recommendations come two weeks after 12-year-old Indigenous boy Dujuan Hoosan pleaded with the UN Human Rights Council to stop Australia incarcerating young children.’

A photo released in 2016 shows guards surrounding a child in a Townsville detention centre.
Supplied (Amnesty International)


“Right around Australia, each state and territory has set the minimum age of responsibility at 10, so 10 years of age is the age which a child can be arrested, charged with an offence, hauled before a court, or locked away in a youth prison,” senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, Shahleena Musk said.



READ MORE

'Stop jailing 10-year-olds': Indigenous boy addresses UN on Australia's youth detention laws


“This age is really out of step with international standards, and lags behind the rest of the world, where the median age is around 14."

Read more here: Why Australia needs to raise the criminal age of responsibility to 14

 

[Nakosis]

I was in Juvie Hall in Colorado. I mean they watch you and provide structure but we did art and math, I was able to tutor some of the other kids, got three meals a day. It was a pretty cool place. At least better than being homeless.

I was arrested for stealing food.

 

[Ouroboros]

Going by what research in psychology suggests, we don't have the ability to fully understand culpability or social responsibility until late teens or later, if I remember it right. Even 12, 14, 16, still a bit early psychologically.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

There are children who murder people and torture animals to death. Children can be sadistic psychopaths and they must be removed from society.

 

[Sunstone]

Going by what research in psychology suggests, we don't have the ability to fully understand culpability or social responsibility until late teens or later, if I remember it right. Even 12, 14, 16, still a bit early psychologically.

Your memory is pretty much the same as mine on this issue. Plus, as I recall a single year of development can make a huge difference. So it really matters whether the legal cut off is, say, 16 or 17.

 

[The Hammer]

There are children who murder people and torture animals to death. Children can be sadistic psychopaths and they must be removed from society.

But WHY are these children behaving that way? Mental illness has a nurture as much as a nature component.

 

[The Hammer]

Part of the issue as I see it with locking children up in Juvenile centers is it's implication on later recidivism. People who get put in prison (or juvenile detention) have a much higher recidivism rate (likelihood to go back to jail/commit further crimes). Instead of incarceration, we should look at rehabilitation for child offenders (and adults).

Do We Know The Full Extent of Juvenile Recidivism?

 

[Mock Turtle]

Here in the UK, as in many other countries no doubt, the age of criminal responsibility is ten - possibly far too low. One of our most notorious cases involved two ten-year-old boys horribly killing a toddler (James Bulger) for no apparent reason. They were essentially treated as adults, even though it came to light that at least one of them had a very bad family background. In Norway, a young girl was killed by two boys and treated very differently, but I think the age of criminal responsibility was 14 there.

How can we separate out the environment and family situation from any innate tendencies, and knowing that we don't fully mature until well into our twenties? How much responsibility should we place on parents/carers for the behaviour of their children rather than putting it all on the children? Locking them up from a young age mostly just leads them into a life of crime and only a few escape to make a decent life. One of the two mentioned above (Thompson) seems to have done so as has a female child killer (Mary Bell) - both having anonymity.