HERE we go again – yet another rumpus about raising the age of criminal responsibility from eight to 12. Politicians and a variety of professional people have been debating the rights and wrongs of the age set in Scotland, one of the youngest in Europe.
There are so many little hooligans running round at the moment. Statistics reveal that more than 2,000 children aged between eight and 11 are caught breaking the law every year in Scotland. So, say the diehards, take the little horrors to court and force them to pay for what they have done – and do so in front of a proper judge and jury.
The only word I can think of to describe Scotland’s age of criminal responsibility is “barbaric” – and positively barbaric at that.
It was fixed at eight in 1932 and, despite repeated attempts to raise it to be in line with other European countries, there it has remained.
Yet we have the cheek to call ourselves a civilised country.
What an absurd situation it is in which we find ourselves.
On the one hand we have the children’s hearing system, one of the most successful methods in the world of tackling youth offending.
Scotland is praised everywhere for its reporters to children’s panels – apart from here, in the country of origin, where the system has been consistently undermined, mainly by Labour politicians.
Despite our amazing welfare net for child offenders, we have this barbaric rule that a child of eight who commits a serious offence should face an adult trial in a court of law. Fortunately, not many eight-year-olds commit murder, fire-raising and rape. But it does happen and, when it does, it is an out-and-out disaster.
Only look back at the trial of the two 10-year-olds convicted of the murder of little Jamie Bulger.
What a farce that was.
For some mysterious reason, when a child commits a crime, grown-ups become far more condemnatory than they ever would be with an adult who has killed.
Nobody in their right mind would want to face the ugly mob which turned up, day in, day out, for the trial of those two boys from Liverpool.
Had the boys not had police protection, some of the good people of Liverpool would, quite happily, have stoned them to death at Preston Crown Court.
What they did to Jamie was unspeakably evil, to a certain extent premeditated, and they certainly understood right from wrong.
But did those two children understand the legal process at their own trial?
No, not one word of it.
Therefore, did we have the right to put them through it?
Other countries are nowhere near as vindictive towards child criminals as we are.
Take Norway as an example.
A year after Jamie Bulger lost his life, a little girl of five, called Silje Raedergard, was stripped by a group of boys, stoned, beaten and left to freeze to death in the snow.
In Norway, where the age of criminal responsibility is 15, little Silje’s murderers were treated totally differently from Bulger’s two killers.
There was no criminal trial. Instead, the boys were sent straight back to school and helped by psychologists to fathom why they had done what they did and how to deal with all the consequences.
Not even Silje’s mother could find it in her heart to despise them.
Beate Raedergard said recently: “I do not understand why those boys killed my baby and I will never recover. But I do not hate those boys. They understood what they had done but not the consequences, not the terrible pain they had inflicted on those close to Silje.”
To hear a Scots parent utter similar words would be a rarity, indeed.
They would be far more likely to want their pound of flesh – an eye for an eye and all that nonsense.
Where does that get us?
Answer: nowhere.
It is well known that the younger you label a child a criminal, the more likely they are to spend a lifetime in jail, re-offending on release, becoming more and more of a risk to society.
Why?
Because we don’t believe in rehabilitating child criminals, in trying to give them another chance.
Fortunately, the children’s panels and those who serve on them know the score.
Children’s hearings were established in 1970 in response to a report by Lord Kilbrandon, adopting a social welfare approach to the problems of youngsters in trouble.
Essentially, the hearings took children out of the courts and delivered them back to their own communities, but serious crimes are not dealt with by hearings; they are referred to a court.
The main problem is that, over the years, the hearings have seen a huge increase in care and protection cases, as opposed to dealing with children who offend.
The question Scottish ministers should be asking is whether pressure to deal with the child victims of abuse and neglect has diminished the effectiveness of the system for dealing with the ones who commit crime.
Our politicians are too stupid to ask that question.
Instead, they sit back and whine about children who are out of control.
My point is that many of the children who commit crimes are more sinned against than sinful. They have usually been abused or maltreated in some way.
They might have repeatedly missed school or been beyond parental control.
Whose fault is that, by the way?
Did I hear someone say the parents?
No, I thought not.
The parents escape censure while we, fools that we are, bring the full force of the law down on children.
It is madness.
Name one other legal or social situation in which children are given complete responsibility aged eight.
Saying they can cope with an adult trial is exactly the same as suggesting they take their driving test at eight or get married.
Do you think that is a good idea?
No. I thought not.