Well, of course we should. But it is the point that younger people are not the same as adults as far as their capacity to understand the full moral weight of their decisions that is at issue. Young people do hit people without understanding everything that entails. 'It's not nice' after all is an adult's intermediary explanation that a child can grasp before they can understand that 'this action will harm the other person for some time to come'.
A true life case, told me by a lawyer following the lowering of the age of legal culpability: A Turkish boy with some learning difficulties, aged ten, just, struck his three year-old sister in a tantrum. Tragically, and to his horror, he broke his sister's arm. Before the change in the law this case would have been dealt with by the family, and more than likely, by the social services and by the school. That does not mean that he would have been excused this horrible action. Far from it. His parents were shocked, and, though they never hit him, they did convey to him their horror at what he had done to his sister in a way that taught him the lesson he had not learned until then: that actions in haste and anger can have lasting and damaging consequences to other people.
However, the recent change in the law means that now the boy is considered to be criminally culpable in the same way an adult it. The courts did modify their judgement to take into account the boy's inability to understand what he had done, and did not jail him (though that provision does now exist with the introduction of child jails in Britain - already 120 boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 15 are held in these special kiddie jails).
But unfortunately the courts did not have discretion over the special register for offences against young people. Under this (also recent) provision, people who are charged with serious offences against young people are put on a register - permanently. Because this young boy lost his temper he will have to register a police station on a regular basis, notify the police of any change of address, disclose his criminal record to employers FOR THE REST OF HIS NATURAL LIFE. The legal system has marked this boy out as part of the same criminal category as the child molesters and murderers that are tracked under the police's campaign against pedophiles.
In message <19990623143716.99696.qmail at hotmail.com>, Jane G*** <janeg555 at hotmail.com> writes
>It is extremely revealing that you chose to reduce the original
>discussion--about whether Roiphe's claims about feminists, and the problem
>of rape, were at all accurate--to a quibble over whether we should prosecute
>children who rape as adults, or as children. Your initial complaints had
>nothing to do with the relative punishments which ought to be meted out to
>rapists based on their age, but you have chosen to respond only to this
>issue. Perhaps you would have had to admit that you made a series of
>unfounded and, at best, offensive remarks about sexual assault and feminism.
No. I continued on this point because this was the point I was challenged upon. If I have offended you, then I take no pleasure in that, but I don't see that anything I have said is outside the bounds of rational debate. But I welcome your concession on the point that criminal culpability for children ought to be distinct from criminal culpability for adults.
>
>And for the record, I believe that a child is perfectly capable of
>intentional sexual assault. I also do not believe that a child should be
>penalized for this assault in the same way as an adult would be,
>particularly because there is a great deal of hope that education and
>therapy may benefit a younger offender.
Rape is a criminal offence. To commit a rape, you must be criminally culpable. If (horrible offensive image for which I do apologise) an animal were to sexually impose itself on a person then it would be wrong to say that the animal had raped the person. -- Jim heartfield