Age of criminal responsibility

Back in 1993, two 10 yr old boys took a 2 yo toddler from a shopping mall. The little one went freely and CCTV shows that he held the hand of one of the older boys. The older boys took the toddler to a railway track and killed him by bashing his head with a brick and a car battery. The killers were released on parole in 2001 and given new identities. One of them is now back in jail for what are said to be serious criminal charges but we don't know what they are.

That is the background to the fact that this case and others have reawakend the debate on what age should we set for criminal responsibilty. In Britain, it is 10 yrs old (8 yrs old in Scotland) and that is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, in Western Europe. The simplistics amongst us are clamouring to raise the age to say 14, 16 or even 18. Are they saying that we have to change because France or Germany are different? If we used that logic, we'd be changing all sorts of laws.

Each country is different. Go to Amsterdam and you see the glass covered tourists boats moored on the canal sides at night; it was no different when I went there the first time back in 1970. Try doing that in the UK and they would be bricked to oblivion in just one night.

No, any decision on this issue must be based on local circumstances not what is happening in the Congo.

But there is a wider and much more important issue here - why should there be a fixed age anyway? Children develop at different speeds and much depends on parenting in the first 5 years. Some parents infuse their kids with moral values and others don't; many do it half heartedly. So who is to say that all children below a given age are not criminally responsibe whilst those above that age are. It all depends on the child and his/her upbringing.

In an ideal world, you'd scrap the fixed age limit and make an assessment of the child before deciding upon the way it was to be treated much as you do with adults with respect to insanity. Trouble is the assessment would be made by sociologists who are only too willing to play the 'there, there, it's not your fault' card.

I don't have an answer here. But of this, I am sure that any 10 year old from whatever background would know that bashing a 2 yo's head until he died was wrong.