10

They're talking about lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 (right now it's 12).

Now, I distinctly remember how my mind worked at age 10, and I'm certain I had the necessary sense of consequences to be held legally responsible for my own actions. In fact, I thought I was legally responsible for my own actions throughout childhood - I didn't learn about the age 12 threshold until I was already 12 - which made me really uncomfortable in situations where my parents wanted to bend the rules a bit. At any rate, my ten year old self could have handled going to court just as well as my adult self could, I think. (I've never actually been to court IRL, although I sometimes translate court proceedings and have seen a few movies and TV shows.)

However, I'm concerned about the utter vitriol that some people who support lowering the age are spewing. Some commentators seem to think that all kids are evil, vicious little brats and are embracing this as a way to give them the punishment they deserve. Like I said before, I distinctly remember being that age so I know with absolute certainty that they aren't sweet innocent angels, but neither does the entire age group deserve to be punished for some inherent evil. The malicious and punitive attitude coming from the people who support lowering the age makes me wonder whether doing so is at all sound from a criminological and child development perspective. We don't want a situation where the punishment for criminal activity just makes kids into more effective delinquents. I sincerely hope any changes are subject to thorough review by criminology and child psychology experts, to make sure the process actually rehabilitates kids instead of just making things worse. I wholeheartedly support everyone being responsible for their own actions, but we don't want the anger and hatred of the loudest commentators to create a punitive system that just produces hardened thugs.

Also, there is the problem that when you're a kid and the adults around you (even if it's just a very loud minority) act like you're an insolent little brat who deserves to be punished even though you haven't done anything wrong (or anything nearly as wrong as they think you have), you come to think that all adults actively want you to be miserable and therefore are out to get you. This leads you to the realization that adults are not to be trusted, and then you don't confide in adults when you have a real problem that requires adult advice or help. When I was a kid, my father kept saying that he should spank us pre-emptively so we wouldn't be bad when we went out. He never actually did that, that I can recall, and in retrospect it may (or may not) have been some weird attempt at humour, but it didn't feel like that at the time. It felt like he actively wanted us to be miserable and humiliated, like it gave him joy to punish us and he was looking for the slightest excuse, and as a result I told my parents very little. I didn't tell them about most of the bullying I suffered for fear I'd get a lecture that I deserved it. I didn't tell them when I was sexually harrassed for fear they'd punish me for somehow inviting it. I didn't tell them that I lost all my friends at the beginning of grade 9 because they chose to take up smoking, for fear that they'd punish me for knowing people who smoked. Luckily I didn't have any serious problems in these "controversial" areas that would have required adult intervention! In retrospect I don't think they would have punished me for these things (although I'm not absolutely certain about that), but that's the mindset created when a kid thinks that grownups enjoy punishing her. I'm worried that if this ugly, punitive attitude permeats the youth justice system and trickles down to kids through the current media coverage, an entire generation will distrust their grownups the way I distrust mine.

I'm all for personal responsibility for one's actions and natural consequences, and I do think a 10-year-old can deal with that, but this must be done carefully, mindfully, calmly, with input from experts and professionals, and without influence by extremists - either those who think 10-year-olds are sweet innocent angels, or those who think 10-year-olds are evil incorrigible little demon spawn.

Further thoughts:

- There needs to be some kind of mechanism to protect children from the legal consequences of actions they do at the behest of their parents. I don't agree with parents being legally responsible for actions that the children take independently, but if the parent instructs the child to do something illegal, the parent should bear the full legal consequences. My parents never asked me to do anything illegal, but they did ask me to do things that I thought were illegal in my youthful overestimation of what the police would arrest you for, (e.g. my mother would ask me to wait in line with the grocery cart while she ran to grab one item she'd forgotten, and I thought the police would come and arrest me if I got to the register before my mother came back, because I didn't have any money on me to pay for the groceries) and I know that it's very hard for a 10-year-old to deal with a divergence between "being good" by obeying one's parents and "being good" by obeying the law.

- It's kind of. . . inconsistent? (not the exact word I'm looking for, but as close as I can come) to lower the age of legal responsibility while raising the age of consent.