Unionists sabotage plan to abolish caging of 10 year olds

Rather than win the debate regarding raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 from the current 10 years old, unionist parties have abused a veto power to stymie a bill’s progression at Stormont.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) used Stormont’s Petition of Concern (PoC) mechanism during a debate on the Justice Bill on Monday, 15 June.

The SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole reacted furiously to the legislation’s debate being sabotaged, saying:

It is an utter farce and a travesty of democracy. Once again, these institutions are being dragged into disrepute by parties that cannot accept democracy and the fact that we are allowed to debate issues here.

Challenging the use of a measure intended for use on issues that are of particular significance to nationalist or unionist communities, O’Toole said:

To be clear, [the MACR amendment] does not contain anything that relates to the vital interests of one community or another. I am not aware that it mentions unionists, nationalists or core constitutional issues at all. It does not threaten core issues of identity.

Non-aligned parties frozen out by Stormont veto abuse

Alliance Justice Minister Naomi Long accused the unionists of being:

…a minority abusing a petition that is there to protect minority rights and using it to impose their will on the majority.

She said the move perpetuated the public’s perception of Stormont being “farcical”. Long rightly complained of feeling “disenfranchised”. The votes of non-aligned MLAs such as those of Alliance, People Before Profit and independents effectively carry less weight once a PoC has been triggered.

The Good Friday Agreement introduced PoCs as a means of minority rights protection. Once triggered, it means the legislation in question needs cross-community support to pass. That is, 60% of all MLAs, including at least 40% of each unionist and nationalist bloc.

On Tuesday, UUP leader Jon Burrows defended his decision to use the Stormont veto, saying:

I used a legitimate tool to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

In Monday’s debate, Burrows entertained himself for 90 minutes with the sound of his own voice, referencing victims and the vulnerable without ever entirely rebutting opposition arguments on how they are currently failed.

His strongest point was perhaps that the north of Ireland’s approach to youth offenders does place an emphasis on methods like restorative justice, rather than custodial sentences. Observers abroad have praised the approach. That kind of method, in the words of restorative justice facilitator Northern Ireland Alternatives:

…addresses the problems of low-level crime and anti-social behaviour by attempting to fix the broken relationships between the victim, the offender and the community.

Essentially, Burrows was saying that it’s ok to continue treating 10 year olds as criminals, so long as the police and prosecution service continue to be flexible in how they deal with offenders.

Criminalising children for being poor

Sian Mulholland of Alliance had given the more convincing counter-argument earlier in the day. Mulholland was arguing in favour of her party’s proposal to raise MACR age to 14. She showed that, for the young people who are placed in custody, 49.5% reoffend.

Hardly a good way to serve the victims Burrows claimed to be so concerned about. By taking the criminalisation option off the table for all those under 14, it would enable greater use of options integrating health and social services. They would be more inclined to look at what led a child to offend in the first place. Mulholland said methods of this kind show far lower reoffending rates.

Referring to the recent Belfast pogroms, Mulholland said:

I want to know why a 12-year-old is out on the street burning down a house. If adults are grooming, threatening, coercing or using children to commit offences, the answer is not to punish those children more quickly so that adults will not take advantage of them. The answer is to identify exploitation. The answer is to protect the child and disrupt the adults…

Mulholland cited the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, which followed “4,300 young people”. The North Antrim MLA said it showed that:

…serious offending is linked to wider vulnerabilities and social adversity; that early police contact and formal processing can predict later persistent offending;

So criminalising kids is essentially punishing them for being poor. Doing so traumatises them, and inclines them towards seeing themselves as a criminal, potentially leading to further offending.

10 year olds know right from wrong? It’s more complicated

As for the argument of Burrows and various DUP MPs that a 10 year old “knows the difference between right and wrong”, Mulholland led with the science that shows this is a simplistic assessment. She said:

Developmental research is clear that the parts of the brain that are responsible for judgement, impulse control, risk assessment and self-regulation are still developing right through adolescence and into early adulthood.

A major review commissioned by the Scottish Sentencing Council found that the brain does not fully mature until at least the mid-20s, with systems linked to self-regulation developing much later.

We don’t let 10 year olds vote, because we don’t think their brains have the capacity yet for sound decision making. Following this logic, they also shouldn’t be locked up for errors of judgement.

Ultimately, Burrows and co showed they don’t care greatly about logic, or the knowledge produced from hours of sincere debate. In the end, they were happy to anti-democratically override all that through their cynical abuse of veto powers.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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