See also the murder case of a 13-year-old boy. Is it imperative to lower the age of criminal responsibility?

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See also the murder case of a 13-year-old boy. Is it imperative to lower the age of criminal responsibility?

Release time：2020-06-02

There is a controversial thing. When we don’t understand, we should ask the old man who smokes on the side of the road. If even he thinks this behavior should be punished, we have to look back and think about whether it’s us There is something wrong with the criminal law. Rather than being immersed in the "rationality" of legal professionals and not responding to the demands of ordinary people.

It was another case of the murder of a minor girl. The victim was 10 years old and the suspect was under 14 years old. It was less than half a year since the 13-year-old boy killed a 10-year-old girl in Dalian. The victims in the two cases were of the same age, and the suspects were of the same age, and both had corpses thrown away. In just a few hours, this topic has been read 600 million times on Weibo, and voices calling for a reduction in the age of criminal responsibility have emerged one after another.

There is a proverb in the criminal law, "Infant is no different from insanity", which means that both infant and insanity have no ability to identify and control, and are incapable of responsibility. Therefore, in criminal law, it says, They are all people who are not criminally liable.

Our country’s criminal law stipulates that persons under the age of 14 shall not bear criminal responsibility. In other words, illegal acts committed by persons under the age of 14 are definitely not criminalized. The reason for the criminal law to stipulate this is mainly because people under the age of 14 are still in their infancy and have immature physical and mental development. They still lack a clear understanding of the content, social significance and results of their actions.

The criminal law emphasizes that it is not a crime if the law does not expressly stipulate that it is not a crime, and the law does not expressly stipulate that no punishment is imposed, so this provision of the criminal law is also absolutely strict. Since the criminal law stipulates this, the judiciary must abide by it. Even if it is one day or even an hour away from reaching the age of 14, it cannot be punished. Such regulations are indeed very rigid, but the law stipulates this, because if they are not stipulated in this way, there will be no specific operational standards. It can be seen that setting responsibility capacity through age is a last resort method.

Some people may think that since our country’s criminal law may indulge illegal acts committed by people under the age of 14, is there a problem with our country’s criminal law. In fact, this is not the case. At least 80% of the world’s criminal laws use 14 as the starting point for the age of criminal responsibility. For example, Article 19 of the German Criminal Law stipulates that "persons under the age of 14 at the time of the act have no capacity for responsibility." Article 41 of the Japanese Criminal Law stipulates that "the act of a person under the age of 14 shall not be punished."

Therefore, although there are endless voices advocating lowering the age of criminal responsibility of 14 years old, the mainstream view in criminal law still believes that there is no need to lower it, because young people under the age of 14 commit crimes themselves are very rare. It is necessary to lower the age of criminal responsibility.

This view of scholars is not unreasonable. The criminal law not only does not pay attention to trivial matters, but also rarely pays attention to the rare things, because the criminal law should give ordinary people a reasonable expectation. But thinking about it, there seems to be a problem here, and that is the absence of criminological research. In less than half a year, two vicious criminal cases of murder committed by persons under the age of 14 occurred one after another. So how many ordinary criminal acts committed by persons under the age of 14 have occurred in the country? And from the perspective of the number of crimes (crimes that actually occurred but not discovered), how many crimes were committed by people under the age of 14 who actually occurred but have not yet been discovered?

Unfortunately, we have not seen authoritative criminological research so far. Even the claims that the age of criminal responsibility should be lowered, either in the mood or on paper, lack the support of empirical research.

Therefore, the most urgent task is to count the crimes committed by people under the age of 14, and conduct criminological research on this, because we must first figure out one thing, that is, is crime committed by people under the age of 14 rare? If crimes committed by people under the age of 14 are not as rare as we believe, then we must re-examine our views and seriously consider whether to lower the age of criminal responsibility.

However, even if the issue of lowering the age of criminal responsibility will not be resolved for a while, it does not mean that there is no way to solve the problem of impunity for criminals under the age of 14. We can try to establish a malicious supplementary age system similar to the common law countries in the criminal law.

This is a special rule established by the Commonwealth and American law countries for crimes committed by persons over 10 but under 14 years of age. The general meaning is that although the young have no crime, the illegal acts committed by them should not be condemned. However, if they know that the illegal act they have committed is evil and commit it, they can be held criminally responsible.

Take the two cases of a 13-year-old boy who killed a 10-year-old girl as an example. Both of these cases have evasion of punishment by throwing the body. Obviously, the perpetrator knew that his behavior was illegal, and this maliciousness supplemented the lack of age. In other words, this kind of behavior will be punished if it occurs in a common law country.

Due to the harshness of the criminal law, the criminal law should indeed be conservative, but this does not mean that the criminal law will not advance with the times. There is a controversial thing. When we don’t understand, we should ask the old man who smokes on the side of the road. If even he thinks this behavior should be punished, we have to look back and think about whether it’s us There is something wrong with the criminal law. Rather than being immersed in the "rationality" of legal professionals and not responding to the demands of ordinary people.

Therefore, while emphasizing that crimes and punishments are legally prescribed, we cannot ignore the criminal law’s response to public opinion, let alone the criminal law’s protection of victims.

Reprinted source: Criminal Debate Thinking

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