Parliament Workbench

Petition · PE01847 · Session 5

Raise the age of criminal responsibility

Closed Submitted 26 Nov 2020 Justice
Signatures
0
92 online signatures with a country
Comments
8
Considered
1 meeting
in the Official Report

What it asks

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to urgently raise the criminal age of responsibility to a minimum age of 14.

What the petitioner did first

I have been in correspondence with the Justice Secretary on this exact issue.

Where it was considered

Official Report
  1. 13 Jan 2021
    Public Petitions Committee
    New Petitions
    1 mention

Signatures by country

92 online signatures
  1. Scotland66 71.7%
  2. United Kingdom17 18.5%
  3. England6 6.5%
  4. Wales2 2.2%
  5. United States1 1.1%

Comments

8 comments, oldest first
  1. Barry Donnan 26 Nov 2020
    Time for an urgent national debate on this issue.
  2. Marti Morrison 26 Nov 2020
    This issue needs addressed.
  3. Charles Clark 26 Nov 2020
    Bring Scottish law up to date
    (a patriot)
  4. Jim Berrington 28 Nov 2020
    Atrocities
  5. Andrew Jones 2 Dec 2020
    A fair and balanced approach to understanding the legal aspects of age and acceptability to criminal responsibility.
  6. Alexander Cubie Carmichael 11 Dec 2020
    This change is overdue. Scotland should look like a mature and caring jurisdiction. In this respect, it does not. There are provisions in place that, if adapted, would easily embrace this change. Health, education, social care and justice bodies already work constructively to nurture and assist young people in difficulty. I feel sure that they would cope with this change.
  7. Roger Green 14 Dec 2020
    At 12 years old my young mind had been educated via family, friends, peers and the education system to know right from wrong, anywhere on this planets, accepted there may be mitigating circumstances, whereby a child should not be prosecuted.
  8. Andrew Fraser 19 Dec 2020
    Given what we now know about the way in which our brains develop, I could hardly believe we are so far behind in this. About time we raised the voting age as well.