(NE)OPRAVDANOST SNIŽAVANJA STAROSNE GRANICE NASTUPANJA KRIVIČNE ODGOVORNOSTI U FEDERACIJI BOSNE I HERCEGOVINE
THE (NON) JUSTIFICATION OF LOWERING THE AGE OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE FEDERATION OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Summary/Abstract: In the middle of 2023, a thirteen-year-old elementary school student in Lukavac (Bosnia and Herzegovina) shot a teacher with a firearm, causing him life-threatening injuries. It happened just one month after a much more monstrous crime had been committed by his peer in a school in Belgrade. Taking into consideration that in accordance with the positive (juvenile) criminal legislation in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, young persons of that age cannot be prosecuted by the criminal justice authorities, because the age limit for the onset of criminal responsibility is 14 years, in light of the aforementioned events, one of the vice presidents of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina submitted an initiative to the competent Ministry of Justice to amend the relevant legislation by lowering, or redefining the age limit for the onset of criminal responsibility. The paper presents different models of defining the age limits of criminal responsibility in comparative law, as well as tendencies related to their lowering, i.e. raising in the national laws of countries around the world in the last few decades. After that, the paper analyses the relevant international and supranational legal standards in this area, as well as the results of certain (neuro) scientific research related to this issue. Based on all of the above, it is concluded that the initiative to lower or redefine the age of criminal responsibility in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a valid scientific and legal foundation and that it represents a kind of moral panic and penal populism.

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