Monday 3 September 2007

Age of Criminal Responsibility

There have been callsto increase the age of criminal responsibility to 18.

Considering the nature of crimes and attitude of some very young feral children, this could not come at a worse time. It is an inversion. It is a further attempt at infantilisation and rejection of consequence. At least some people are against it .

I have a solution: If you want to make under 18's immune, then have the parents, absent or not, in the dock instead, as they are responsible for their child's actions if they are to be considered a minor in the eyes of the law. It could even be up to the parents to decide.

7 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

This is nuts. If anything the age of ten should be revised down, to about three or four.

Your plan to let parents choose whether to take the rap or to dob their kids in it has superficial appeal but will never 'fly'.

Roger Thornhill said...

It was a provocative statement to highlight the irrationality of raising the age to 18 - if the person is not responsible for themselves, somebody needs to be responsible for them.

CFD Ed said...

Many children are well aware that ten is the age of criminal responsibility.

Just because they can not be held ~criminally responsible does not mean they can not be dealt with if there is a will.

Given the fuss that the do-gooders make at the prospect of one of the little dears being on the receiving end of a parental smack then parents should be given the option of taking responsibility. If they can’t, or won’t, then something like reform school might be in order and a fine for the parents to pay restitution.

Henry North London 2.0 said...

When I was a kid you didn't want the police to come anywhere near you and you expected trouble if you got brought home by a bobby.

|Trouble from your father not from the law

Now the opposite is more truth

Roger Thornhill said...

HNL: Now the opposite is more truth

Yes, the bobby gets aggro from the parents.

chris said...

I blogged about the reason for increasing the age of criminal responsibility a while ago. Nothing to do with them feeling sorry for the feral scrotes really, more of a way of making the crime numbers look a lot better without having to actually do anything about crime.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Chris, exactly, esp the link to your site (that in turn links to PG)