Twenty-three children under the age of 14 years were sent to prison in 2024, according to statistics released in response to a parliamentary question in the House of Lords earlier this week on the age of criminal responsibility. Tabled by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, It was revealed that 1,687 sentences were passed on children between the ages of 10 and 14.
England and Wales has the lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe, 10 years. In most European countries it is 12 years, or 14 or higher – in Russia it is 16 except for serious offences where it is 14 and in China it is 16 except for very serious offences. ‘How does the government possession square with international comparative, UN advice, modern euros Science and humane values?’ asked the Labour Peer Baroness Chakrabarti.
Baroness Alison Levitt, parliamentary under secretary of state for justice and a barrister, said that making international comparisons was ‘imprecise, and some of our international partners are lowering their age of criminal responsibility’. ‘For example, Sweden is proposing to reduce it from 15 in response to an increase in gangs recruiting children to commit serious offences precisely because they know they cannot be prosecuted. We make every effort to keep children out of the criminal justice system unless it is absolutely unavoidable.’ the barrister went on to say that ‘only 13%’ of all children sentenced were aged between 10 and 14 and that represented ‘a sustained downward trend’.
Baroness Elizabeth Butler Sloss, a cross bench pier and a former Lord Justice of appeal, asked if the minister was aware that ‘four children’s commissioners of the four parts of the UK’ agreed that ‘this country is the most punitive of all European countries towards children’.
The cross bench peer Lord Michael Berkley highlighted the disproportionate use of joint enterprise against young people and how that ‘given rise to a certain notoriety in the criminal justice system’. ‘Given the way that gangs of children tend to go around together, is not the age of 10 a real problem? Children of 10 can be convicted of murder simply because one teenager further up the pecking order murder someone. Barrenness Leavitt replied by saying that the Law Commission was ‘currently looking at all cases of murder in joint enterprise…. The government will consider that very seriously because we understand entirely the point the noble Lord is making.’
