Government rejects calls to lower age of criminal responsibility

England's children's commissioner Maggie Atkinson has called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to the age of 12, a move roundly rejected by the government. She said that most criminals under that age did not fully understand their actions; in response the Ministry of Justice claimed that those over 10 did in actual fact know the difference "between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing."

The domestic limit is amongst the lowest in the world, currently set at 8 in Scotland and 10 in the rest of the United Kingdom. Only Switzerland has a lower threshold - at 7 - in Europe, with most countries' age of criminal responsibility set at somewhere in the mid-teens.

Atkinson's comments have come in the wake of the recent Jon Venables saga; she said it was wrong that he and Robert Thompson - 10 years old at the time of James Bulger's abduction and subsequent murder - had been tried in an adult court. Both were released on life licences in 2001 and given new identities. The reasons behind why Venables was returned to prison earlier this month have still not been revealed, nor his right to anonymity removed.

Reactions to the commissioner's suggestions have been mixed; over on the BBC message boards it seems there are as many people opposed to the idea as there are supporting it. Defenders of the status quo argue that 10 is a sufficient age for a child to know the difference between right and wrong, whilst those more disposed to increasing the limit to the higher levels seen on the continent will prevent criminalising children.

The main problem facing the legal system and child criminality, however, is that children learn and mature at different rates; development is simply not uniform nor homogeneous across youngsters of a similar age. Some 10 year olds will appear both emotionally and physically to be well on their way to spotty adolescence, whilst others will still almost certainly - and properly - be regarded as 'children' and young ones at that. Setting what is in effect an arbitrary age limit on deciding whether a child has adequately acquired the knowledge of good and evil can only ever be used as a guide rather than as a fixed point from when a 'child' has become an 'adult'.