REX MAKIN is senior partner at E Rex Makin and Co.
A SURVEY last week found 3,000 offences were committed nationally in the past year by children too young to be prosecuted.
The figure has prompted calls from some in the legal profession – including notably Laurence Lee, the solicitor who defended James Bulger’s killer Jon Venables – for a lowering of the legal age of responsibity to include children under ten.
In my view this is a ludicrous, absurd, impractical and some would say even idiotic idea.
There are countries where the criminal age of responsibility is 15 or even older. You do not cure a situation by introducing draconian ideas.
Children vary in their mental capacity and in my view there can be no hard and fast rule.
The present position is as good as you will get in this country.
In the James Bulger case, the court spent some considerable time examining the mental capacity of the two accused 10-year-old boys to determine whether they were aware of their actions and the charges against them.
One of the boys sat in the dock of the court apparently playing with a computer game, seemingly oblivious to the proceedings taking place around him.
Children under the age of 10 involved in wrongdoing need intervention by social workers, and certainly not punitive judicial processes.