The BBC has highlighted a report prepared by Rob Allen on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies that claims that too many children are prosecuted and criminalised. Previously Mr Allen had been engaged for eight years as a member of the Youth Justice Board and as such it is safe to assume that he is well versed in the realities of child offending. He considers that there should be greater emphasis on the educational, social and mental health needs of younger offenders. Mr Allen believes that we have become preoccupied with protecting the public from young people and that there is a growing intolerance of teenage misbehaviour of all kinds.
It is easy to dismiss Mr Allen's views as typically air-headed, left-wing liberal and soft on crime, but I happen to agree with him. More children are badly behaved, or allowed to be badly behaved than when I was a child. Similarly, a growing number of young adults no longer appear to know how to conduct themselves responsibly in public. The rule and convention abiding public have come to feel besieged and the howls of the tabloid press purporting to speak on their behalf has bullied successive administrations Labour and Conservative into "doing something about it". The "something" has borne all the hallmarks of being knee-jerk, rather than being calmly and coolly considered whilst in possession of all the material facts. It was inevitable that once the age of criminal responsibility was lowered, an increasing number of younger children would be sucked into the criminal justice system and most unnecessarily.
There are offences so bad that even a child should know that they are wrong, but nuisance and silly offending should not be the subject of criminal sanction. "Pecking order fights" in the school playground now result in prosecution. That should not be so. Such behaviour represents a phase of male development. It is ridiculous and wrong-headed to apply the same opprobrium or a criminal sanction to a playground scrap between two thirteen year-old boys as to a bar room brawl involving two men. Hormones or whatever, it is a phase boys "grown out of" as they mature. Only males with serious problems still fight by the time they reach their late teens and early twenties. It is those individuals with whom the State ought to concern itself.
The BBC, in its usual impartial and helpful way, reminds us in its report of the age of various offenders who committed very serious crimes, children such as Jon Venables and Robert Thomson, Danny and Rickie Preddie and Mary Bell. However, these children were the exception to the rule. It is important to point out that crimes of that gravity committed by children occur very rarely. The murder committed by Mary Bell took place in 1968. James Bulger's murder by Venables and Thomson took place twenty-five years later in 1993 and Damilola Taylor's in 2000.
In essence, most child crime is very small beer and is committed largely for reasons other than just plain "badness" or "poor upbringing". Children can be immature and silly, behave irrationally, empathise with others to a limited degree only or not at all. They possess all manner of "flaws" caused by their lack of life experiences which can limit their being able to behave well or responsibly in each and every social situation.
The truth is that in most cases "kids" just grow up. "Special intervention" by the Court system is more likely to do harm than good. The Nanny State should heed this research and just butt out. The Shadow Home Affairs minister Edward Garnier should take note.
Criminal age 'should be raised'