Maldives to lower age of criminal responsibility to 12
The minister said that the age of criminal responsibility is higher in Maldives than in other developed countries.
By
Shahudha Mohamed
The government has decided to reduce the age at which young people can be held responsible for criminal offences to 12 years and the government is in the process of amending the law accordingly.
Under the current Criminal Justice Act, responsibility for criminal offences is required if the perpetrator is 15 years old.
The government's move to reduce the age at which criminal offences can be legally held was revealed at a joint press conference held by the police and ministries on Saturday evening after a video of a child being beaten up by two other kids inside a mosque went viral.
Homeland Security Minister Ali Ihsan said the Child Justice Act presently makes it difficult to take appropriate action against such cases.
“One of the biggest challenges at the moment is that the age at which a child can be held responsible for a crime, especially a criminal offence, is 15 years,” he said.
"However, we have police records and our juvenile justice department records show that there are many children between the ages of 12 and 13 in Maldives who are at risk in such environments”.
The Minister noted that:
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About 200 children have been identified as needing rehabilitation treatment at the state custody centre
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Most of the children were 12, 13, 14 years old; they are not old enough to take responsibility for the crime
"Therefore, the law is not designed to hold these children responsible for a criminal offence. The government's intention is to reduce the age limit to 12 years," Ihsan said.
He noted that the age of criminal responsibility is higher in Maldives than in other developed countries. Thus:
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The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 years
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In some US states, responsibility starts at 11 years old
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In many countries around the world, the age has been lowered to 12, 13, or 14 years
“Looking at our society, we believe that the age of responsibility is now 12 years,” Ihsan said.
Therefore, a paper has been prepared and sent to the Attorney General's Office, he said, studying the changes to be made to the Child Justice Act.
In addition to lowering the age of criminal responsibility, the government has decided to bring some changes to the Justice Act. They include:
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He said that while a juvenile convicted at the age of 17 is often sentenced much later, at the age of 25 and the sentence is treated as a juvenile crime and he serves it in a juvenile prison; the government wants to change that too
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At an earlier press conference, the police had also said that they were trying to change the law so that handcuffs could not be used to take children into custody
Although the age of responsibility for crimes is much lower in other countries than in the Maldives, older children usually take responsibility only for serious crimes such as murder.
