The former president of the supreme court Lady Hale is urging ministers to change the law so that children as young as 10 can no longer be charged as adults.
Along with Lady Butler-Sloss, previously the highest-ranking female judge in England and Wales, she has signed an amendment to the crime and policing bill to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
The amendment emerged after charities said children’s brains were not fully developed by the age of 10, meaning they were unlikely to understand the impact of their actions or engage effectively with legal proceedings. The government has said it will oppose the amendment.
England and Wales have the joint lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe alongside Switzerland.
Children as young as 10 can be investigated by police, charged with a crime and put on trial, potentially leading to a lifelong criminal record. Most countries, including Spain, Germany and Italy, have set it at 14 or higher.
In the year up to March 2024, about 3,400 children age 10 to 14 were cautioned or sentenced in England and Wales.
The UN has previously urged England and Wales to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. Countries criticised by ministers for having poor human rights records, such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Russia, have higher ages of criminal responsibility.
Shami Chakrabarti, the former head of Liberty who is also backing the amendment, said: “A government prioritising child poverty needs to step up on child criminalisation. To prosecute 10-year-olds is barbaric – out of step with neuroscience, civilised international values and attempts at greater equality.”
The age of criminal responsibility was lowered to 10 by the then Labour government in 1998 after an outcry over the torture and murder of two-year-old James Bulger by two 10-year-old boys. In 2021, Scotland raised its age of criminal responsibility from eight to 12.
Fiona Rutherford, the chief executive of the charity Justice, said: “Treating 10-year-olds as criminals is cruel and irrational. It puts us at odds with international norms and years behind the science on brain development.”
Setting the age of criminal responsibility at 10 does not preclude other types of intervention, for instance diversion from the criminal justice system, where this would be a more proportionate response. Many children age 10 to 14 are diverted from the formal criminal justice system or receive an out-of-court disposal.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are not changing the age of criminal responsibility, instead we want to help children who have committed crime to stop reoffending and turn their lives around.
“Children age 10 to 14 are already treated differently from adults, dealt with by youth courts and given different sentences, but setting the age of criminal responsibility at 10 means the justice system can intervene early and help prevent future, more serious crimes.”
