10 to 14
Children as young as 10 should no longer be hauled into the criminal justice system, the Bar Council has said, calling for the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales to be lifted to 14.
The recommendation comes in a new report, Reviewing the minimum age of criminal responsibility, published yesterday, which argues that prosecuting children at such a young age is neither effective, proportionate nor just.
At 10, England and Wales has the lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe, a threshold that has sat untouched for 60 years, despite what the Bar Council says are profound shifts in the science of how children’s brains actually develop.
Bar chair Kirsty Brimelow KC, who made children in the justice system a flagship priority on taking up the role at the start of the year, said the real question was not “how do we punish” but “how do we prevent a lifetime in the criminal justice system?”
A “tough on crime” approach aimed at children, she argued, is “very rarely an effective strategy,” and dragging youngsters into the system is more likely to push them towards further offending than away from it. Diversion, she said, is better for the child, better for the public and cheaper to boot.
In the year to March 2025 just 233 children aged 10 to 12 entered the criminal justice system for the first time, only one of whom received immediate custody. Of the 1,590 children aged 10 to 14 found guilty over the same period, only 22 were locked up.
The report paints a bleak picture of who those children tend to be. Youngsters caught up in the system are disproportionately likely to have suffered abuse, trauma or bereavement, to be neurodivergent or have learning disabilities, and to come from poverty. Black and minoritised children, it adds, fare worse at every stage.
While care-experienced children make up under 1% of the child population, they account for 65% of those in the secure estate.
The Bar Council’s campaign comes amid long-running concern that the “adult” Crown court, with its secure docks, wigs, gowns and packed public galleries, is simply no place for a child to meaningfully follow, let alone participate in, their own trial.
Soooo…..
What do you do with 6ft tall 12 or 13 year old thugs shoplifting, waving knives around, assaulting teachers?
Give them a packet of sweets and a bit of therapy?
The leftists would blame structural socio-economic challenges as being the problem not the criminal thugs themselves. They would try to add colonialism’s impact on top, no doubt, at every possible opportunity. So their “solution” is pretty much a pack of sweets and but of therapy.
It is not the criminal’s fault they are immoral, greedy, thugs. The criminals are the victims. Don’t you understand?
Too many leftists at the top of criminology and in the Bar Council, as this nonsense waste of money report shows.
I agree.
It’s 110% bollocks.
My Dad grew up in a deprived and abusive home but knew the difference between right and wrong by the age of 10.
That said there was proper discipline in school in those days to make up for problems at home and keep kids on the straight and narrow.
By contrast, in my kids (state) schools the “kids with issues”
get a free pass and a chill out room and a free pass, which doesn’t do them any favours.
The average 12-year old is about 5 feet tall. If they’re six feet tall, they’re likely to have some sort of gigantism and unlikely to have fully developed brains.
14 is far too high. They can’t be serious…?
If this had been in force at the relevant time, we wouldn’t have been able to prosecute the murderers of James Bulger.
When I started practice we still had doli incapax. That was a rebuttal presumption that a child under the age of 14 did not have criminal capacity.
Note that it was rebuttable, so if you wished to prosecute a child then there would be a hearing where the prosecution would have to show that the child knew that an act was morally wrong and not just naughty,
That’s what happened in the Thompson & Venables case.
Having spoken to my criminal bar friends this seems to be what’s likely to come back.
Nowadays it wouldn’t be doli incapax, it would be Dolly Income-Packs.
Errant children would be rewarded with toys and cash rather than face real consequences!
After the abject failure on fees increases and the total inability of the Bar to protect jury trials, it is not surprising that this type of permissive society Roy Jenkins’ reform is being touted. “Look over here” rather than take accountability for decades of poor leadership.