The Guardian view on the age of criminal responsibility: raise it now | Editorial

By criminalising children at a lower age than any other EU country, the UK shows itself to be stuck in the past

The number of 10-year-olds cautioned or convicted of crimes in England and Wales has fallen steeply, from 710 in 2010 to 47 last year. This forms part of a bigger trend that has seen arrests of children fall from 200,000 in 2011 to 87,000 in 2016, and the child custody population decline from 2,541 a decade ago to 830 in May this year (all but 33 of them boys). These figures mark a significant improvement in the approach to young people taken by the police and criminal justice system – mirroring similar changes in Scotland. Since evidence overwhelmingly shows that contact with the police, courts and prisons is harmful to children, finding other ways to deal with them is preferable.

But praise for the campaigners and professionals responsible for this overhaul must be tempered by an awareness of the ways in which the system has got worse. Last week’s Guardian investigation of youth courts has highlighted the impact of cuts and closures, including wholly unacceptable delays that leave children in limbo, and the rising proportion of children convicted of crimes who are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. From 14% in 2010, that figure has almost doubled to 27%. Meanwhile, the youth reoffending rate has risen, and at 40.9% in 2017 was more than 10 percentage points higher than for adult criminals over 21.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/33gkCcR