The minimum age of criminal responsibility in New Zealand is 10 years old and has been since 1961. Photo / Jan H. Anderson, Getty Images, File
The minimum age of criminal responsibility in New Zealand is 10 years old and has been since 1961. Photo / Jan H. Anderson, Getty Images, File
Opinion by Enys Delmage
OPINION
Ten-year-olds are not hardened, unrepentant criminals – they are scared and often traumatised children.
This has been my experience in over 15 years of working with young people who present risks to themselves and others.
For many of those years, I have dealt with the negative and stigmatising perceptionsof this vulnerable group of children and have been making patient, sympathetic efforts to help people understand that the concepts of perpetrator and victim can coexist inside the same body.
These children are not irredeemable; their brains are developing, and the things we do to them as a society have the ability to shape them, either positively or negatively.
Nevertheless, the minimum age of criminal responsibility in New Zealand is 10 years of age and has been since 1961. It is time for a change.
Aotearoa New Zealand is highly conspicuous on the international stage for harbouring an age much lower than the international average, which is 14 years old.
Indeed, the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child concluded their latest review of New Zealand last week, which reflected that the Committee is “seriously concerned” that the minimum age of criminal responsibility is below international standards.
The map below represents a summation of work I have been doing to chart the minimum ages over the past decade:
The age of criminal responsibility around the world, with New Zealand at 10. Illustration / Enys Delmage
This map demonstrates that many countries have a higher minimum age of criminal responsibility, and reflects that New Zealand finds itself in a reducing number of countries whose minimum age is below 14.
It is no coincidence that the UN Committee stipulated in 2019 that the minimum age of criminal responsibility should be 14 years of age. The UN Committee arrived at this position in light of, in part, “new knowledge about child and adolescent development”.
In my profession, I have been lucky enough to see some of that research related to brain development and have been acutely aware of the various abilities of children as they mature.
Brain development is a protracted process which extends into early adulthood. Neuroscientific research shows that while our brains are maturing, our personalities, our foresight and our logical reasoning are simply not at the same level when we are children versus when we are adults. Many of us can make sense of this by remembering our early years and thinking about how different we are now compared to our former selves.
The frontal lobe of the brain is especially important to me as a clinician since this is where we think decision-making, judgement, consideration of consequences and rational thought processes come from – and, unsurprisingly, this is the last bit of the brain to mature fully.
Many of us have made a series of impulsive decisions through our childhood years, decisions which we may now regret, but hopefully for most of us, the consequences of those impulsive decisions were softened by a number of protective factors: good schooling, a solid family unit, the financial means to cope with challenges, good healthcare, an abundance of other opportunities to support our development and prosocial networks which deterred us from getting into more serious trouble.
The children I work with have had none of those protections available to them.
They are often abused, beaten, molested, neglected and abandoned for significant periods of their lives, ostracised by prosocial peers, excluded from schools, missed by health and welfare services and left to fend for themselves in whatever way they can.
With no moral guidance, they learn that the world is a hostile and brutal place, and the only way to survive is to fight – against their whānau and iwi, against the police, against their teachers, social workers and mental health nurses, against a system which has systematically disenfranchised them from before they were born.
But now we have an opportunity in front of us. An opportunity to change things for the better – not just for their futures, but for ours too.
Enys Delmage. Photo / Supplied
After all, in what sort of society do we want to raise our own children? Health, welfare, mental wellbeing, freedom from trauma, connection with our roots, opportunities, a sense of citizenship, and happiness should not be the preserve of the few.
No child should be forgotten about.
Raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility is a major step towards changing our perceptions of the children of Aotearoa New Zealand and deciding to understand rather than condemn. The UN Committee has warned us that this country is just not getting it right under international human rights standards.
We can do better. And if we can, they can.
- Dr Enys Delmage is a consultant adolescent forensic psychiatrist.
