From playground to prison

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Background

The minimum age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales was set at ten in the 1963 Children and Young Person’s Act. Previously the 1908 Children Act set it at seven.
In the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, Labour abolished the principle of doli incapax whereby the prosecution had to prove that a child under 14 appearing in the criminal court knew and fully understood what he or she was doing was seriously wrong.

There are essentially two ways of looking at th...