Calls to raise age of criminal responsibility grow
Yet, the moment they cross a certain line – that protective bubble vanishes. Under current law, a child still in primary school is considered mature enough to stand in a dock, be questioned under caution and carry a criminal record that could follow them for decades.
This paradox was at the heart of a Senedd debate on Wednesday (January 14) as Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 14.
He told the Welsh Parliament: “A child still in primary school can be arrested, questioned under caution, prosecuted, convicted, and marked, sometimes for years, by an encounter with the criminal courts. I believe we should raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
“That's not to be soft on crime, as some would see it – it's to be smart on crime, clear-eyed, with a hard-headed focus on what the evidence tells us.”
He warned: “The evidence is all in one direction: criminalising 10, 11, 12 and 13-year-olds is to create a conveyor belt of future crime, pulling children deeper into the system, widening the net, turning one incident into the beginning of a longer offending career.”
The former Plaid Cymru leader criticised the “crude” current threshold, saying: “The age of criminal responsibility is not just a number, it’s a line that determines whether we treat a child primarily as a child who needs help or an offender to be processed."
Mr Price pointed out that the doctrine of “doli incapax” – which presumed children aged 10 to 13 were incapable of criminal intent unless proven otherwise – was abolished in 1998.
Warning of an incoherent and unfair system, he said: “Nothing better replaced it. So, now we have the worst of both worlds – a very low threshold with none of the old protections.”
