Comments on: Reader reply: Debate over the age of criminal responsibility overlooks the true meaning of intervention

By: Warwick Fry

Warwick Fry — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 04:14:26 +0000

Mannik makes a reasonable excuse for the existing processes to counter youth ‘crime’ (I speak as a former somewhat sociopathic privileged white teenager shoplifter during my student years, stealing textbooks and sometimes on-selling them for beer money). But she does not account for a) the attitude of police who enforce the legal parameters, and b) the sometimes racist attitudes of the same.

By: ian kemp

ian kemp — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:29:38 +0000

A very informative article, thank you

By: drastic

drastic — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 05:46:29 +0000

Locking up young people has been having a very bad press here in WA. So it is conflated with the age of criminal responsibility, with calls to raise it. This is the first time I’ve been made aware that intervention is not possible without a criminal conviction. I mean, who knew?

Antisocial behaviour is rife in some schools, and intervention to maintain normal discipline is scoffed at by the miscreants, who know that no punishment will follow. This begins in primary school. In the case of a violent child school policy may be to abandon the classroom for the sake of safety. A child can hit, verbally abuse and spit on a teacher with impunity. And they do.

I expect that school experiences reinforce antisocial behaviour, making later intervention more difficult. I’m not suggesting lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 5, but I do think that the earliest practical intervention, at any age, would be beneficial for everyone involved. Don’t ask me how though. It would need to be kind, and persistent, and take account of all factors.

Since my own time at school (1950s and 60s) social attitudes and behaviours have changed so much that it is entirely possible that some factor is at work which is so far undiscovered, such as a toxic mix of some of the thousands of chemicals which are everywhere in the environment now, and which were absent in my time way back then. There’s a reason for everything. Road rage for example. There’s no good explanation for that, but is it possible that the out-gassing of the car’s plastic interior affects some people? Just putting it out there.

Thanks for the interesting article.

By: redfernhood

redfernhood — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 04:52:30 +0000

Keep age of criminal responsibility low, says Mannik, as diversion from criminal process is the way to put kids right.
Yeah.
So, say, in NSW diversion programs are heavily accessed by the children of the rich, and indigenous children and poor children are largely excluded. Police there say publicly that it’s the indigenous justice reps and the community justice centres, not letting the kids admit guilt: a precondition to diversion that isn’t part of the law and isn’t required of the rich and well connected.
How about we act to intervene without demanding, or requiring, criminal liability and admissions?
Intervention should never be conditional on the threat of criminal prosecution and conviction.
And policy that confines intervention to a few exceptions to the criminal justice pipeline is very nearly no intervention at all.

By: Andrew Holliday

Andrew Holliday — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 03:26:01 +0000

This is a thoughtful and nuanced article, based on that rarest of commodities in this space – experience. I commend it.

I also note that other Crikey pieces on this issue identify the developing brain as not being mature enough for criminal responsibility before the age of 14 – and although I doubt any parent would consider the idea that people have to be over 14 to understand the difference between right and wrong (or legal and illegal as much as those concepts intersect) the point remains important – responsibility is a gradual continuum
not a hard line, while another makes the key point that ‘children don’t belong in prison’ – which is quite true – but then the evidence of hundreds of years of penal systems is that probably no one does – it’s a system that doesn’t work and never has (the only people where locking them up is a benefit are those that are deemed to never be safe for society – but that’s a mental illness issue rather than a criminal matter). But we’re stuck with it for now. What we’re not stuck with is custodial sentences for people under 18 – we could stop that immediately – while still retaining criminal responsibility at much younger ages (yes, even 10).

We need to stop thinking we only have two options.