The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility: Clinical, Criminological/Sociological, Developmental and Legal Perspectives

Abstract

One of the most complex, contested and controversial questions confronting modern juvenile/youth justice systems concerns the minimum age of criminal responsibility: the age at which a child is deemed to be sufficiently ‘mature’ to be held responsible before the substantive criminal law. In the three UK jurisdictions − England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland − the minimum age of criminal responsibility falls significantly below the European average. In England and Wales, for example, the largest UK jurisdiction by some distance, children are held to be fully responsible in criminal proceedings once they reach the age of 10 years. The legitimacy, or otherwise, of exposing such young children to the full weight of criminal law is increasingly a source of lively debate, attracting interest from a broad range of stakeholders. It is timely, therefore, to subject the minimum age of criminal responsibility to analytical scrutiny. It is within this context that the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Adolescent Forensic Psychiatry Special Interest Group took the initiative, in October 2012, to convene a conference in order to explore the question of criminal responsibility from different disciplinary perspectives: clinical, criminological/sociological, developmental and legal. The substantive articles that form the basis of this ‘special issue’ began life at that conference. They have since been developed and subjected to peer review and what follows is an attempt to open up an informed inter-disciplinary discussion. It is no coincidence, given the low minimum ages of criminal responsibility that prevail, that each article centres its analytical focus on youth justice jurisdictions within the UK. That being said, each article also draws upon a wide-ranging international literature in addressing questions that extend far beyond any single, and nationally bounded, juris492050 YJJ13210.1177/1473225413492050Youth JusticeChurch et al. 2013