BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 10:11 AM

So it sounds like they were dealt with in the same way as children are here in the US when they are "tried as adults". Which is the debate I was talking about in an earlier post. This is a raging debate here in the US because a lot of people with mindsets that are more punitive than constructive, think that there are kinds of crimes that are "adult crimes", and that if a child is old enough to commit an "adult crime", he or she is old enough to be tried as an adult. Personally, I think people like that must be totally brainwashed by our media, because if they weren't, they would be able to see right through that argument. On the other hand, I could be giving them too much credit.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Emma B
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 10:01 AM

Well that's true in the UK too Carol a juvenile would not normally be dealt with in an adult court but in a Youth/juvenile court without the media, or jury of peers

The law states that reports of a case at a Youth Court must not contain any particulars which could lead to the identification of any child or young person involved in the case as a defendant or witness.
In particular it bans the names, addresses or names of schools and the use of any photograph of the young person.
However, the Crime Sentences Act 1997 gives a Youth Court the power to lift the ban on identifying a young person when he is convicted if the magistrates believe it would be in the public interest


The two boys who killed James Bulger however, went on public trial in an adult court in 1993

Venables and Thompson were required to sit in a raised dock, separated from their parents "with the formal panoply of the adult criminal trial involving judge and counsel in wigs and gowns"
The fact that it is unlikely that the boys understood points of law which arose or the "evidential intricacies" has never been disputed.

At the time of the conviction there was international criticism of the English practice of trying juveniles in adult courts in some instances

A 'senior Tory spokesman' said in response to this criticism

"The British judicial system is more than capable of making a reasoned decision on which kind of court juveniles are tried in.
This was a particularly heinous crime which gravely offended public sensitivity.
The decision to hear this case in an adult court reflected therefore the severity of the case."

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 09:27 AM

In the US, all children who are charged as juveniles are dealth with through juvenile court, and the determination for how to handle the child is not pre-determined. In my state, the minimum age is 6, which, if they were dealth with in the adult courts, I would consider to be barbaric.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Emma B
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 09:22 AM

The proposition is that in England and Wales the age of criminal responsilility be raised to bring us in line with other European counties - although the Nordic countries, for example, all set the age at fifteen years


This does NOT mean absolving children from what would be a crime if committed by an adult.

At the present an offence committed by a child under the age of criminal responsibility is dealt with under civil child care proceedings, designed for children that need compulsory measures of care, rather than a criminal court either juvenile or adult

Last March ministers confirmed the age of criminal responsibility in Scotland was to be raised to 12 to bring Scotland into line with most of Europe
The Scottish Government said the rise would not mean "letting off" younger offenders.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said it was more appropriate to deal with them in the children's hearings system.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 09:07 AM

I misunderstood. Here in the US, the debate is always about when to try a juvenile as an adult (something that is becoming more popular and at ever younger ages). We don't, as a nation, have the debate that you are having in the UK, because we don't have a national standard minimum age of criminal responsibility, and many states don't have one, either. I agree that it's a difficult discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 08:35 AM

""Juveniles should be tried as juveniles and adults should be tried as adults. It seems to me people ought to be able to understand how this works.""

They are Carol, and Jamie's killers were tried as juveniles, convicted as juveniles, and incarcerated in a facility for young offenders, separate from the adult prison system.

What is being proposed here, is that they should not have been tried at all, because they were too young to know that torture and murder are wrong.

Even a puppy can be taught, at a very early age that it is wrong to crap on the carpet, so you'll excuse me if I find that argument ridiculous in the extreme.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 06:47 AM

A child of 10 is not capable of forming judgements independently from the adults who have shaped its formative experiences. This is because the myelin sheath is not developed until much later. For this reason, if the adults in the child's life are modeling bad behavior, even if the child is told that such behavior is bad, the child will not fully understand the "badness" of it, nor the ramifications of bad behaviors. I don't know anything about this particular child's home environment while growing up, but there are many reasons why a child of 10 could be unable to form appropriate judgements.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 06:46 AM

Yes I knew it was naughty. But I bet the neighbour kid who beat up my baby brother didn't know it was naughty to do so, because he was alternately ignored / beaten by his parents.

He had an utterly different view of what "wrong behaviour" was compared to me, who's parents taught me that you don't pick on smaller and weaker people. They taught me that bullying is wrong. The neighbour kid's parents taught him that bullying is right.

Geddit!?!?

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 06:39 AM

Quite so, Virginia: which illustrates that BR was right to point out that OP had used the wrong word, as she meant "raising" [making higher], not 'highering' which, as you point out, means rising higher]. It was arguably ill-mannered, as you claim, to raise the point; but your supposed demolition of his point proves the opposite to what you intended.

As to the topic of the thread: this silly woman Atkinson seems to imagine that 10-year-olds are incapable of recognising that beating a little boy to death with a brick and leaving his body on a railway line to get cut in half by a train is a verryveryveryvery NAUGHTY thing to do. I knew that when I was 10. Didn't she? Didn't you? Didn't everybody?

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 06:25 AM

Thank you Emma... That is precisely what I was looking for. So I imagine and hope that Mary (and possibly her daughter if needed) receive appropriate psychological care.

Perpetrators typically come from being victims first. I do not like the concept of punishment. I believe it reinforces negative behaviour. Correction and rehabilitation is the remit and responsibility of civilisation.

BTW bubblyrat... pointing out that someone has used (in your opinion) a wrong word is impolite and mean spirited. Same as correcting a mispronunciation.

High"er*ing\, a. Rising higher; ascending.
In ever highering eagle circles. --Tennyson.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Emma B
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 05:56 AM

VT - maybe one place to start would be to read the history of Mary Bell who

'(born May 26, 1957 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England) was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown (aged four years) and (with her friend Norma) Brian Howe (aged three years).
Bell was ten years old at the time of one of the killings, and eleven at the time of the other.'

On 17 December 1968, Norma was acquitted but Mary was convicted of "manslaughter due to diminished responsibility", the jury taking their lead from her diagnosis by court-appointed psychiatrists who described her as displaying "classic symptoms of psychopathology". She was sentenced to be "detained at Her Majesty's pleasure": effectively an indefinite sentence of imprisonment.

Mary Bell was housed at the Red Bank Special Unit from February 1969 until November 1973 when she was transferred to the womens facility at Styal prison.

She was released May 14, 1980, and stayed in Suffolk
After moving back in with her mother, she met a young man and became pregnant.
There was great concern over whether the woman who had murdered two children should be able to become a mother herself, yet she fought for the right to keep her child, which was born in 1984.
She was allowed to keep the child, who was technically a ward of the court until 1992

Her daughter did not know of her mother's past until Bell's location was discovered by reporters and she and her mother had to leave their house with bed sheets over their heads.

The daughter's anonymity was originally protected until she reached the age of 18. However, on 21 May 2003, Bell won a High Court battle to have her own anonymity and that of her daughter extended for life.
Any court order permanently protecting the identity of someone is consequently known as a Mary Bell Order.

Mary's own childhood was 'a nightmare of abandonment and drug overdoses.' which were probably administered by her mother.

much more about Mary's childhood etc here

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 05:48 AM

Trying them as juveniles doesn't mean they go unpunished. It means they are punished in an age appropriate manner. And it also means we always consider rehabilitation a possibility.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: bubblyrat
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 05:34 AM

Oh yes ! Sorry, but I would have used the word "Raising", not "Highering" ( whatever it means ??)---no wonder children today can't communicate effectively if ADULTS can't !!

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: bubblyrat
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 05:30 AM

Of course it is an impossible topic,because nobody,especially those in government,has been willing or indeed able,to accept the fact that wrongdoing,especially murder,should be PUNISHED !! As long as anti-social behaviour and criminality are perceived by the young,as being not only acceptable but un-punishable,then things can only get worse.There cannot be a child in Britain today who does not know that people like Ian Huntley,or the Yorkshire Ripper,are "detained" in conditions of some ease & comfort,constantly monitored to prevent suicide attempts,well-fed,allowed access to pornography (it is their "right",apparently)and encouraged to study various subjects,including theology and,probably,criminology !!
                   Some "punishment" !!! No,bring back Borstals,make them strict,disciplinarian,forbidding places,and make certain that the little devils who end up there are left in no doubt as to just how disapproving of their crimes & actions society,as a whole ,really is.Then get rid of all the do-gooders and wishy-washy Liberal hand-wringers who infest our once-admired and highly efficient justice system. And,above all, let us have more support,understanding and sympathy for the VICTIMS of crime,and their families !! Venables and his chum can GO TO HELL !

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 05:09 AM

What Carol said.

Also, I don't know how a child can be rehabilitated after doing such a thing.

Are there any recorded instances, stories from ancient days (barring Cain and Abel) of how this would be dealt with? Did villages turn out deviants, leaving them to starve/freeze? Was that more civilised than putting them in juvenile facilities where they would be further corrupted and corrupting others?

If a child who has committed murder can and has been rehabilitated, how does s/he live with what s/he? Is it more cruel to make him/her face that guilt until they die or kill themselves?

This is an impossible topic.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 04:53 AM

There's a reason why we have age minimums for things like driving, drinking, voting, signing contracts, becoming soldiers, etc. Those reasons are the same as the reasons why we should have minimum ages for trying people as adults. They have to do with brain development, judgement, and myelin sheaths. Juveniles should be tried as juveniles and adults should be tried as adults. It seems to me people ought to be able to understand how this works.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 04:37 AM

Dead Horse, don't forget to include free dental treatment, so you can bite people again, if you can still remember why...

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Dead Horse
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 04:15 AM

Cut & pasted from news site:
The age of criminal responsibility should be raised from 10 to 12, says England's children's commissioner.
Maggie Atkinson said the killers of James Bulger should have undergone "programmes" to help turn their lives around, rather than being prosecuted.
Most criminals under 12 did not fully understand their actions, she said.
...............................................................
How about adding an Upper Limit to the age of responsibility?
As we get older we can look forward to being seen as less responsible, so when I reach that hoped for Upper Limit, I shall get me a nice gun and go seek out a few names I have from my hit list.
Then I would be put on a 'programme' and given a new identity while enjoying the benefits of a full NHS service and possibly a well earned break in the sun on a tropical island of my choosing.
There I would lie back and contemplate the error of my ways in my increasing dotage.

Subject: RE: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 04:02 AM

Too young to be treated in exactly the same way an adult would be - not too young to be removed from society for an INDEFINITE period of time.

Subject: BS: Highering Age of Criminal Responsibility
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 13 Mar 10 - 03:53 AM

Apparently, some now feel that at 10 years old, the boys who viciously and savagely tortured and murdered little Jamie Bulger, were too young to be convicted of their crime.

It's thought that children of that age have no real understanding of the consequences of their actions.

So, let me get this right....


If you deliberately set out one morning to steal a child, take him to a railway line, physically abuse and torture him, leave him to die in front of a train, you don't know that what you're doing is wrong?????

And then, years later, after you've been given a whole new identity, probably hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of 'expert' help from crowds of people, you get arrested for serious offences regarding child pornography.........................?

Is James Venables STILL not responsible?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that something, somewhere, inside those two boys is seriously wrong, whether it be parental or pathological, but seriously, are we going to say that any 10 year old child has freedom to do anything at all and not be charged?????????

I cannot even begin to imagine the rage inside Jamie's mother. It must burn inside her every single day, along with a horror and a sorrow so deep that most of cannot even touch it....

My sympathies lie entirely with that little boy, in this case.

And I feel that if a 10 year old is capable of that kind of deeply shocking crime, then he should also be capable of enduring, and accepting, the consequences of it.