Calls grow to raise age of criminal responsibility

A TEN-YEAR-OLD is too young to leave the school gates without a parent’s permission, let alone cast a ballot.

- CHRIS HAINES

They can’t work a paper round, open a bank account or see a 12A film without an adult. They are, in almost every sense, dependent on the grownups around them.

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 as Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 14.

The Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MS 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 hardheaded 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”