Law should hold juveniles accountable

A BOY ROBBED A GIRL and injured her with a pair of scissors in Xiaogan, Central China’s Hubei province, on March 30. But since the boy was not yet 14 years old at the time, the local police refused to handle the case as a criminal one. Beijing News comments:

According to Criminal Law, people aged 16 or above have criminal liability, while youths aged 14 or 15 have criminal liability only for eight kinds of serious violent crimes. Thus according to the law it is right that the Xiaogan police are not pursuing the case.

Although the Criminal Law exempts criminal liability of the people under 16 years old, it suggests they be sheltered and rehabilitated by the government. However, in practice this is rarely carried out for youngsters under the age of 14 because of the lack of detailed rules.

As the number of violent cases involving children under the age of 14 has increased in recent years, and most of the victims are even younger children, with some bearing lifelong injuries, both physical and psychological, the calls to lower the age threshold for criminal liability have become louder.

Although many other countries also make 14 the minimum age requirement for undertaking criminal liability, most reserve some flexibility.

In more than 30 states of the United States, for instance, there is not an age limit for criminal liability. It depends on the prosecutors’ proof to conclude whether the defendants are mature enough to be held accountable for the crimes they have committed.

China can draw lessons from these legal practices to adjust its Criminal Law to better check the rise in the number of serious crimes committed by minors. Keeping the current legal provisions unchanged and completely separating the criminals from the age of 14 may no longer match the reality and might cause social injustice.