Legal Age of Responsibility Is

General Comment No. 24 encourages countries to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years without exception. The object of this crime is Chinese citizens who have reached the age of criminal responsibility. Foreign citizens and stateless persons cannot be the object of the crime. The object of the crime is national security. The subjective aspect of the crime is that the perpetrator has the subjective intention to commit these acts. The objective aspect of the crime is that the perpetrator commits acts of theft, espionage, purchase or illegal supply of state secrets or intelligence information to individuals or organizations outside the territory of China. It should be noted that the organizations mentioned here outside mainland China include organizations in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and all other countries, as well as agencies or branches of these organizations located in mainland China. If the perpetrator commits any of these acts, i.e. theft, espionage, illegal purchase or disclosure of state secrets, he will be charged with this crime.

If the offender was arrested during the commission of the above-mentioned acts or did not obtain State secrets, he or she shall be charged with attempted crime. Under Article 111 of the Penal Code, anyone who illegally steals, spies, buys or discloses State secrets for persons or entities outside the territory of China shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of not less than five years and not more than ten years; If the circumstances are particularly serious, he shall be sentenced to at least ten years` imprisonment or life imprisonment. Hundreds of children of primary school age are needlessly criminalised due to the “ridiculously young” age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales, experts say are calling for an increase. The government has stated that it has no intention of raising the age of criminal responsibility. According to the national definition, criminal responsibility begins at the age of 18, although children can be held responsible from the age of 12 under juvenile justice. [Children and Youth Code, art. 180] The lowering of the age of criminal responsibility, which is widespread in many countries of the world, has serious consequences, particularly with regard to life imprisonment. In many U.S. states, for example, some crimes committed by children have resulted in a mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment without parole. In 2012, the effect of the Supreme Court`s decision that such practices violated the constitutional prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” was limited to making life imprisonment without parole optional rather than mandatory (Miller v. Alabama, 2012).

In addition, Ratledge (2012) reports in the “Review of Commonwealth State Laws Relating to Life Imprisonment of Children” – including “life imprisonment without parole”, “life imprisonment with the possibility of probation”, “imprisonment at the discretion of the executive or the courts” and/or “indefinite imprisonment” – that “45 of the 54 Commonwealth states provide for one or more of the types of life imprisonment”. In addition, in at least 40 countries around the world – almost all of which have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – children can still be sentenced to flogging, flogging, corporal punishment or amputation, and in at least seven countries, juvenile offenders can be legally sentenced to death by lethal injection. hanging, shooting or stoning (Child Rights Information Network, 2012). At the most extreme end of the continuum of human rights violations, Amnesty International (2012: n.p.) recorded 87 executions of juvenile offenders in nine countries between 1990 and 2011, noting the following: Olivia Pinkney, head of the National Police for Children and Youth, said 10 was a “remarkably low” age of criminal responsibility. She added that, from her experience as Hampshire`s chief of police, it was very difficult for these young children to understand “what happens to them when they suffer all the consequences of the law”. According to the International Network for the Rights of the Child, 33 States do not have a minimum age of criminal responsibility. Theoretically, this means that a child of any age could be condemned and condemned. Among states that have a minimum, North Carolina is the lowest at seven years. The minimum age of criminal responsibility for federal crimes is 11, according to the NIR. The definition of crime is broad and includes various behaviours that differ between societies and over time.