Reports that children as young as seven were involved in last year’s riots and public disorder caused a predictable public outcry. How could this happen? Who can we blame?

Yet there was surprisingly little debate on how the justice system in the north is failing children by setting the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility [MACR] too low.

MACR is the lowest age at which a child is deemed to have the capacity to commit a criminal offence.

In Northern Ireland, England and Wales it is just 10 years old. This represents one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in the world and the lowest in Europe. In some countries such as Norway, Sweden and Portugal, it is 15 or 16.

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Here, approximately 800 children aged 10 to 15 are referred through the criminal justice........

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