At what point should a child be tried as an adult? This article was published in the ATP Today magazine Imogen Barr Lower Sixth
whether, if Thompson and Venables had been tried as adults, they would they have recommitted or not.
Emperor Meiji
Research shows that children have the ability to know the difference between right and wrong even before they reach the age of two, and scientists have found that even babies aged between 19 and 21 months understand fairness and can apply it in different situations. If this is true, why are defendants of children who break the law using their ‘lack of maturity and knowledge of consequences’ as an excuse for why they committed the crime? The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 years old which means that anyone who has committed a crime under the age of 10 cannot be arrested or charged with the crime. Children between 10 and 17 can be arrested and taken to court if they have committed a crime, however they are treated differently to adults and are dealt with by youth courts; they have different sentences and do not go to adult prisons if they are convicted. There are lots of cases, outside of the UK, where children have been tried as adults, such as in Pennsylvania. Murder automatically moves a child into an adult court regardless of their age. This is because their view is that murder and other heinous crimes are done with intent and that children are fully aware that they are committing the crime. However, Andy Peaden, the head of Leeds Youth Justice Service (representing all heads of youth offending teams in England & Wales) speaking about the Jamie Bulger case (1993)
said that 10 was “ridiculously young to be prosecuting children” and the age should be raised. “When you work with young people on a regular basis it’s absolutely apparent that 10-year-olds are not able to be wholly held to account for the stuff they do”. The Jamie Bulger case was a horrific murder of a two-year-old boy by two 10-year-old boys (John Venables and Robert Thompson) who took him from his mother in a shopping centre in Liverpool. The boys’ defendants claimed that the boys did not fully understand the consequences of their actions, and therefore should not be tried as harshly as they clearly did not know what they were doing. However, Womack said, “the things that lead a kid to not care if they kill someone make it very hard for them to be part of society. They don’t look at human life as being very valuable. They see themselves as…unimportant to the system. Therefore, the system is unimportant to them.” In addition to this, Jon Venables has reoffended since being given a new identity and being let out of rehabilitation, and many people think that the boys should have been treated with more punishments than with ‘rewards’ (rehabilitation) and that the reason he has reoffended is because he was not punished enough. We must ask
This leads to the question of whether children actually know the difference between right and wrong. And even if they do, does this mean that they should be tried as adults? What determines that when you hit 18, you are now legally an adult? Is it when they can legally buy alcohol? Or drive a car? Or buy a house? The human brain does not fully develop until the age of 25. Should this be the age at which you become an adult? Or should it be a completely different age overall? It has been proven that the frontal lobe, which is extremely important in our decision making, doesn’t finish developing until many years after most cultures in the world consider you an adult. With children under 14, statistics show that there is a good reason to believe that they are cognitively immature enough that they aren’t thinking like an adult, but by the time they reach 14, they should be. When you bring psychiatric problems into this, it becomes very clear that those with these problems should not necessarily receive the same punishment as those without them. Especially for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia where a lot of their actions are uncontrollable and therefore the person themselves may not be fully aware of what they are doing until they have done it.
The things that lead a kid to not care if they kill someone make it very hard for them to be part of society.
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This could lead to the answer that every case should be looked at on a case by case basis and that maybe age should not be the final factor in deciding whether a ‘child’ is tried as an ‘adult’. There are two things to consider; does their age impact their criminal responsibility, and does the person who has committed the crime have any underlying psychiatric problems. And then you can decide their ‘punishment’.
