scholarly journals After the age of criminal responsibility: a defence for children who offend

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-341
Author(s):  
Claire McDiarmid
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Public

In Scotland, the age of criminal responsibility is 8, although children cannot be prosecuted until they are 12. In England and Wales, for all purposes, the age is 10. This article argues that a further mechanism is needed to protect the young who do wrong within the criminal process and it argues for a new, bespoke defence, to be available to young people from the age of criminal responsibility until they attain the age of 18. It looks firstly at criminal capacity – what it is that needs to be understood fairly to hold anyone criminally responsible – and draws on material from developmental psychology and neuro-science, as well as looking at the child’s lived experience, to provide some evidence that the young may, without fault, lack this capacity. It then examines the use of age generally in law, and the age of criminal responsibility within this. Next, it considers existing lack of capacity defences – nonage, diminished responsibility, insanity (or mental disorder) and absence of mens rea – to consider their suitability for use by young and immature defendants. Finally, it presents a proposal for the form of the new defence, taking into account the need for balance with the public interest in conviction of the guilty. Throughout, it notes and analyses the Law Commission’s proposals in this respect.

Policies Into Practice: Intermediate Treatment and Community Service Compared

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-160
Author(s):  
Adrian L. James
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Juvenile Offenders ◽  
Young People ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Marked Change ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTThe philosophy and the policies for dealing with both juvenile and adult offenders in England and Wales have undergone a marked change in the last decade with the introduction of both the Children and Young Persons Act, 1969, and the Criminal Justice Act, 1972. The spirit behind the policies embodied in the first of these was intended to move juvenile offenders even further towards the provisions for children and young people in general and away from identification with adult offenders and the criminal process. In spite of this, many similarities remain between the two major innovations which emerged from these two pieces of legislation, which were intermediate treatment and community service. In terms of implementing these policies, however, wide differences have emerged in the speed, ease, and uniformity with which the different provisions have been introduced. Intermediate treatment, after a long struggle, is only just beginning to establish itself as a practical provision for juveniles whilst community service, introduced some years later, has now been fully implemented. This difference raises fundamental issues related to the implementation of certain areas of social policy. Although the failure of the 1969 Act to achieve the impact envisaged by its proponents has been attributed to its being only partially implemented and to lack of finance, amongst other things, comparison with the relatively successful introduction of community service suggests that there may also be important administrative factors underlying this failure which have been hitherto ignored.

scholarly journals Exploring childhood, criminal responsibility and the evolving capacities of the child: the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-282
Author(s):  
Raymond Arthur
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
The Law

Currently in England and Wales the law considers that all children below 10 years of age are exempt from criminal liability for their actions as such children are morally not responsible and lacking blameworthiness. This approach to young people in conflict with the law misrepresents the evidence regarding young people who offend and encourages highly contestable judgements about individuality, identity and welfare. I will argue that children have a right to respect for their evolving capacities and that respecting this right would help to redirect the criminal justice system towards a normative framework better equipped to accommodate the realities of childhood and in which the child’s experience of vulnerability and powerlessness is embedded throughout.

scholarly journals Access to legal records by children leaving State care: The experience of young people in NSW

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Greenwood ◽  
Julia Mansour ◽  
Celia Winnett
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
New South ◽  
Community Services ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Past Wrongs ◽  
Children In Care ◽  
Made In

For those who have been in the care of the State as children, access to records can be critical to securing justice and redress for past wrongs. This article outlines the arguments made in recent litigation undertaken by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) on behalf of young people who requested access to legal audits conducted on their files by the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Family and Community Services (FACS). It documents the policy change that was achieved as a result of the litigation and makes recommendations for further reform to better realise the rights of children in care to access their records.

scholarly journals The victim in the Irish criminal process: a journey from dispossession towards partial repossession

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-517
Author(s):  
Shane Kilcommins
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Procedural Rationality ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
A Site

This article has sought to examine the criminal justice system’s interactions with victims of crime. It is a relationship which has changed irrevocably over time. A significant discontinuity occurred in the nineteenth century when a new architecture of criminal and penal semiotics slowly emerged. An institutional way of knowing interpersonal conflict crystallised, one which reified system relations over personal experiences. It also emphasised new ideals and values such as proportionality, legalism, procedural rationality, equality and uniformity. New commitments, discourses and practices came to the fore in the criminal justice network. In modernity, the problem of criminal wrongdoing became a rationalised domain of action, a site which actively distrusted and excluded ‘non-objective’ truth claims. The state, the law, the accused and the public interest became the principal claims-makers within this institutional and normative arrangement, an arrangement which would dominate criminal and penal relations for the next 150 years. In the last 40 years, the victim has slowly re-emerged as a stakeholder in the criminal process.

Insanity and the Capacity for Criminal Responsibility

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Capacity Responsibility

There are two different ways in which the insanity defence could he constructed. These relate to different ways in which the insanity defence might question the responsibility of the accused. Either the defence might show that the act in question was not performed in the appropriate way (that the accused lacks attribution-responsibility) or it might show that the agent was not an appropriate subject for criminal responsibility (that he or she lacks capacity-responsibility). Sometimes it is thought that these possibilities collapse into each other: it is only those that cannot perform their acts in the appropriate way that lack the capacity to be criminally responsible. This essay shows three things: first, that Scots criminal law, at least since the nineteenth century, is in a state of confusion between a capacity-responsibility conception of the defence and an attribution-responsibility conception. Second, that capacity-responsibility does not collapse into attribution-responsibility: there are some agents who are capable of forming mens rea but who ought not to be made criminally responsible due to their mental disorder. Third, that a sophisticated account of the capacity-responsibility conception can provide a version of the insanity defence that is both theoretically more elegant and practically more advantageous than the attribution-responsibility conception that has found favour in England and in some Scots decisions.

scholarly journals Debates on youth participation: from citizens in preparation to active social agents

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Tsekoura
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young People ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Youth Participation ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Participatory Decision Making ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Debates

Abstract This article presents current debates regarding the presence of young people in the public domain. There is a wealth of discussion and perplexity regarding how young people choose to get active in the public domain that originates from the distinct use of the term political in academic and policy debates. This article will proceed in the following way: it will summarise the main tenets of the Decline discourse, it will present how the Personalisation discourse draw our attention to alternative ways of involvement, it will discuss how Context focused discourses highlight how participatory decision making relates to the ways young people conceptualise their daily lived experience, and concludes arguing that youth participation can be better understood when it is contextualised within everyday lived experience.

scholarly journals Public Interest in Criminal Procedure and Its Challenges: An Attitude toward Iranian Criminal Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Seyyed Jafar Es-haghi ◽  
Mahdi Sheidaeian
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Procedural Rights

<p>Greek philosophers had accepted “rule of law” as desired governance system since it was the only way to provide all citizens’ public interest. In today’s societies where public policy is accountable for the interests of total society or at least its majority, it is too vital to recognize the concept of public interest. Like other concepts, it is also radically transformed in modern age, despite varied perceptions on this concept, modern concept of public interest is understood as recognizing individual rights, accepting utility principle which means to attract the highest interest for most people, respecting legal process and adapting with common values of society independent of individual interests.</p><p>Criminal procedure is shaped in three main areas including criminal process, entities and its governing laws affected by public interest concept. Regulations such as competencies and penal provisional remedy, entities like the public prosecutor’s office and NGOs and criminal process models like crime control are all justified by this concept. In present paper, it is attempted to adapt such claim to Iranian procedural rights by some illuminations.</p>One can claim that criminal procedure is one of the most obvious arenas of public interest where individual rights and freedoms clash. Since criminal procedure is set to provide public interest like many other laws, it also supports individual rights. Such rights include both procedural and substantial rights. On this basis, criminal procedure aims at achieving a balance point between public interest and individual interest. Here, we study the challenge of four rights supported by criminal procedure on public interest in Iranian laws.

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