Age-old question: when should children be responsible for their crimes?

The age of criminal responsibility acts as the gateway to the criminal justice system – under a certain age you are kept out. Most jurisdictions have this age barrier because it’s widely understood children need sheltering from the criminal law consequences of their behaviour until they are developed enough to understand whether their behaviour is wrong. But what age is the right age? And how do legal systems deal with this difficult question?
What is the age of criminal responsibility?

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, requires states to set a minimum age “below which children shall be presumed not to have the capacity to infringe penal law”. The convention does not actually indicate what age level should be set as a minimum. But in fixing a minimum age, the commentary on the United Nation’s Beijing Rules notes that: “The modern approach would be to consider whether a child can live up to the moral and psychological components of criminal responsibility; that is, whether a child … can be held responsible for essentially antisocial behaviour.”

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