IT may surprise some readers to learn the age of criminal responsibility in Scotland is eight. It’s not an age at which many people have attained moral or intellectual maturity. The Scottish Parliament is 17 years old. So we have to ask how it has taken so long to develop the moral or intellectual maturity to consider raising this widely criticised marker, which condemns many children to a bad start in life as bearers of a criminal record.
A move by the present Scottish Government to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12 has been welcomed by legal and welfare bodies during a consultation exercise, not least for bringing it into line with the age at which a child can be prosecuted. The latter measure was incorporated in the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, which might have been the time to raise the age of criminal responsibility concomitantly.
That it is beyond time the threshold was raised in Scotland has already been pointed out by the UN which considers 12 the minimum marker. Several contributing organisations to the consultation exercise maintained it should be considerably higher. It is 15 in the Scandinavian countries.
That Scotland has the lowest age of criminality in Europe constitutes an embarrassment to an SNP administration priding itself on being “progressive” and which has still not formally committed itself to raising the threshold. True, it has not had stewardship of all the young parliament’s 17 years, but political opponents – notably the Liberal Democrats – are adamant recent administrations have dragged their heels on the matter.
As matters stand, Scots cannot be served alcohol in many places until the age of 21 but can have a criminal record at the age of eight. The latter, at least, makes our notions of responsibility seem whimsical. It is time now for the SNP administration to show it has reached the age of governmental responsibility on this matter.
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