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| Venebles 'Should Have Walked' |
14-Mar-10
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| Children's Commissioner: "In most Western European nations they have a completely different way of intervening with youngsters who have committed crime"... |
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The killers of James Bulger shouldn'to have been prosecuted because children under the age of 12 are too young to understand the consequences of their actions, the Children's Commissioner said yesterday.
Maggie Atkinson, who was appointed to the post last autumn, said under 12s should not be prosecuted for any crime and called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 12 years old.
If this had been the case when James Bulger was killed, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson would not have faced any police action.
Her comments come after James' mother Denise Fergus met Justice Secretary Jack Straw this week to discuss the return to custody of her two-year-old son's killer Jon Venables.
The 27-year-old has been thrown back in prison after child pornography was allegedly found on his laptop.
Dr Atkinson said politicians should put the needs of children first and not allow themselves to be so influenced by the views of victims' relatives.
"The 'we are too worried about the parents issue' is something that runs like a thread through a number of cases. My constant song is 'listen to the children and young people'."
Calling for a change in the law, she said even the most "hardened" of youngsters who have committed serious crimes were "not beyond being frightened".
"The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10 - that's too low, it should certainly be moved up to 12; in some European countries it is 14," she said.
She continued: "In most Western European nations they have a completely different way of intervening with youngsters who have committed crime. Most of their approaches are much more therapeutic, much more family and community based, much more about reparation than simply locking somebody up."
She added: "Youngsters are usually tried in a youth court, (Thompson and Venables) were tried in an adult court.
"What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget.
"But they shouldn't have been tried in an adult court because they were still children."
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We believe that children aged 10 and over can differentiate between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing. We do not intend to raise the age of criminal responsibility."
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