News

Comment piece by Kathleen Marshall, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, published in The Herald on 06.01.09

6 January 2009

Kathleen Marshall, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children & Young People, said:

“Scotland’s treatment of child offenders brings us both praise and condemnation on the international stage. We are praised for our welfare-based children’s hearing system which deals with most children under 16 who commit crimes. Serious offenders can still be prosecuted in adult courts. Yet this applies to children from age 8 up and Scotland is condemned internationally for this exceptionally low age of criminal responsibility. It is lower than the rest of the UK, where the age is 10, and much lower than most other countries. The UN has said that the absolute minimum should be 12 and encourages states to raise it beyond that.

“The Scottish Law Commission recommended in 2001 that the age be raised to 12, but this has never been taken forward. They also said we should stop calling it the “age of criminal responsibility” and change it to the “minimum age for prosecution”. This emphasises the fact that what we are talking about is not whether children of that age can tell the difference between right and wrong, but how we should respond when they commit offences.

“Labelling eight-year-old children as criminals is of little help to anyone and runs the risk of stigmatising them for life. Children of this age who do things that are wrong need help, not condemnation.

“Clearly the low age of criminal responsibility in Scotland is unacceptable and - as the Lord Advocate has also said recently - needs urgently to be reviewed.

“The need for a review was highlighted by debates around the current Sexual Offences Bill (due its second reading soon) which has the potential to criminalise children as young as 8 as sex offenders. There would be serious implications for them later in life, even when they are dealt with through the hearings system on offence grounds rather than prosecuted in the courts.

“I hope that ongoing debate around these issues will prompt some real progress towards fully adopting the UN standards into Scottish Law: a crucial step if we are to truly respect and value our children and look forward to peaceful and respectful communities.”