Age of criminal responsibility to move from ten to 14?

Royal Square. States members leaving the States Chambers. Constable of St Clement, Len Norman Picture: ROB CURRIE

Constable Len Norman said a project to implement the recommendations of the Youth Justice Review – which said the age below which a child is deemed incapable of committing a criminal offence should be raised from the current ten to 14 – was under way.

He said he was not in a position to ‘prejudge’ the outcome of that piece of work, but added that any changes it would lead to would ‘need to be grounded in a fair and just process which retains the safeguards to children already enshrined in the current justice system’.

Pushed to say if it would definitely lead to an increase in the age of criminal responsibility, the minister said ‘yes, absolutely’.

He added: ‘But what we have got to make sure of when we are doing this work is we don’t create a vacuum if children are removed from the scope of the justice system. We have got to make sure they can be fairly tried if they are accused of serious crimes.’

Meanwhile, Mr Norman said that as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child had now been extended to Jersey, and because that convention says that any age of criminal responsibility below 12 is unacceptable, the Attorney General had produced a direction which states that children under the age of 12 should only be prosecuted in exceptional circumstances and with his written consent.

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