The age of criminal responsibility

There should be no minimum age for criminality. These yobs know when they are doing wrong, otherwise why would they do it - they are attention-seeking cowards. Ignorance of the Law is not accepted as an excuse for adults so why should it be different for children? We have created an untouchable section of society who expect society's benefits but who are not prepared to abide by its rules. These yobs should be punished severely instead of hiding behind the Human Rights banner. Unfortunately there is no chance of any change while New Labour wallies are in power.

When children at any age do something they shouldn't.
How do we know if they know what they are doing is wrong
Simple ... They run away

I bet all the posters who would like to dispense with the "Age of Criminal Responsibility" would like to see little Johnny, aged 9, transported for life to the colonies for stealing a loaf of bread, or hung for stealing a sheep. In my view those posters have BlueTongue and should be put out our misery.

The concept of an 'age of criminal responsibility' should be done away with. If it's apparent that a minor has commited a criminal act and was fully aware that he/she was commiting such an act at the time, then they should be prosecuted. There is a long delay in acknowledging that children today are more aware than we (i.e., me - a 40yo) were as children and as such the law needs to catch up. This will get worse and worse - look at the level of violent crime amongst children these days, let alone plain old anti-social behavior - until the police and courts have strong enough powers to put a stop to it.

Kids behaving this way see life in a different way to many others. They have a particularly difficult mental struggle with the idea of seeing the near or long term future with optimism. They can be distracted by everyday occurrences which will upset them, but which for others may not even register. Somehow this latter "half" have learned to manage their way through such difficulties. They will have done this by learning how to react from a single or number of good role models. Kids in the former group are unlikely to have such role models. They will either have had no one to learn from or in their case the role model (parent or other close family) will not have learnt coping/social skills themselves and will instead have taught ways of behaving that are ignorant, rude, poor and selfish.

The hopelessness of this results in anger, awkardness, even despair, and consequently drink, drugs, burglary etc.

So when people say they should just not commit crime, "I didn't" or some such phrase, it is almost certainly the case that these juveniles started out from a completely different point of reference from you. In essence they were hard wired for crime and anti-social behaviour from birth. Society can moan all it likes when the inevitable happens a 14. But this is just thoroughly dishonourable of people who call themselves decent but leave it to someone else to sort out the problem. That's why the rich, (companies as well as people) end up being despised, they do little to help but as usual are the first to criticise and pontificate, even though they have the means to help, but don't!

Hey - in the 60s we had no heating either. (god am I THAT old?) I can well remember how beautiful the fern frost patterns were on the INSIDES of the bedroom windows in the morning. And heating up pennies to hold against the glass and make spy holes to peep out of. I hadn't a clue at the time, that we were "poor"!

Aside from that.....hm. I live in Scotland and I have NEVER seen police punish the "little hooligans". In fact in the next small town to this one, the under age drinkers hang out on Friday nights drinking, without any interruption, a few feet away from the local cop shop.

All the nouveau riche should see/read
Monty Python's We Were So Poor Script

http://www.cmoore.com/funstuff/humor/mp.script.weweresopoor.php

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
GC: A cup ' COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TG: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."
EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope..

It was only one large lump, sticking through the wire netting. And I paid for it by tearing my trousers when (at the age of 8) I climbed over the wall to reach it - a catastrophe when there's no money in the house.

Faced with a choice of becoming Montgomery Clift in "I Confess" or Jimmy Cagney in "Angels With Dirty Faces", I think I'd settle for Ronald Colman in "Random Harvest".

All of which seems to have brought us full circle to the original subject "Kids That Commit Crime - The Age Of Criminal Responsibility". (Apologies to the original writer for the detour).

It is extremely enlightening that our resident poorman made good, Oracle2007 had to in 1947

"steal coal from the railway yard."

a crook if there ever was one.

I wonder whether our friend ever saw the Film, "Dead End" where two kids from the underclass were chased by the police across a railway yard. One got caught, the other got away.

The one who got away eventually became an RC priest. The one who got caught ended up in the electric chair.

Which one are you Oracle2007?

"Wrong on all points, "Rich Are Scum".

I was born in the Absolute Poverty I described, so I'm entitled to give my views on it. I grew up in a grimmer London than anything seen in "today's run down cities". And I wouldn't exactly say we lived in an ivory tower.

Our 2-room flat had no electricity (years before we even had gas mantles); no indoor toilet (we walked 100 yards to use the local pub's outside lavatory); no bath, shower or hot water (just an hour at the Council Baths once a week); and no heating (in the freezing 1947 winter, I had to steal coal from the railway yard, or we'd have frozen to death). And we did come near starvation - but so did many people in the Forties. Public school/university? Can't quite remember going to either: had to leave school at 14 (because we had no income of any sort) and start work next day.

Today, people believe they should be looked after from cradle to grave. The State deliberately encourages them to become dependant on benefits (which ensure the existing Government is always voted back into office) and, as a result, they give up trying to better their existence by their own efforts. Once trapped in this victim/handout culture, they have no future.

I'm banging my head against a brick wall but here's a closing story, illustrating the difference between the UK and the USA and why America is a more successful society than ours today:

Some workmen wait for a bus outside a USA factory, as their boss drives past in a large Cadillac. A workman says "One day, if I have my way, I'll be driving a Cadillac like that one!"

Some workmen are in a bus queue outside a UK factory, as their boss drives past in a Rolls. A workman says "One day, if I have my way, he'll be standing in a bus queue like me!"

I live in an inner city area.
I work in an inner city area.
I hate it.
Ive had to save money so I can move to a nicer area and have nearly completed this aim.
I had no help or handouts, just some ambition.
I agree that the Super Rich may need to be taxed more but I think a lot of these gripes on this thread seemed aimed at anyone who happens to try and better themselves. I agree that the minimum wage is far too low. I agree that the wealth gap is too great. But lets cut the crap. Not one government has eradiated UK povety, many havnt even acknowledged it. All this Rich are Scum and tax the rich name calling just plays into certain peoples hands.
Face it, the only way to deal with this issue is to work hard and get out of the "poor trap" yourself without kicking down others. Just stop making people feel guilty about it!!

if you come from a poor background, you now have less chance of escaping it than you did a generation ago - an appalling legacy of the 'greed is good' 1980s."

Today a significant group of super-rich float free from the rest of society, and think that tax is for the little people.

"Today the rest of society pays a heavy price for the wealth gap - whether middle, low or no income."

The "super-rich" should pay more tax in an effort to reduce child poverty and fight crime, says the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC).