DA LI JE POTREBNO SNIZITI GRANICU KRIVIČNE ODGOVORNOSTI MALOLETNIKA I NA DECU?
IS IT NECESSARY TO LOWER THE AGE OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR JUVENILES TO INCLUDE CHILDREN?

Summary/Abstract: The Republic of Serbia, like the countries of the region and Europe, is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and, as such, has undertaken to respect its provisions, including the views of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the treaty body that supervises the implementation of this international agreement. However, numerous events and the escalation of violence among children have led to reconsideration of the decision to lower the age of criminal responsibility for juveniles to include children, i.e., reducing the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 years. For now, this idea has been abandoned, as it is considered to represent merely penal populism and therefore requires further reconsideration. On the other hand, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has assessed that no State Party to the Convention should prescribe a minimum age of criminal responsibility below 14, and even recommends that this age limit be gradually increased. In this paper, the author addresses this issue by analyzing the position of juveniles within the criminal legislation of Serbia and providing a statistical overview of juveniles as perpetrators of criminal offenses. The author argues that this category of juveniles has been in the position of children at risk, whose behavioral escalation has resulted in criminal responsibility precisely due to the age threshold. Based on this analysis, the author draws a conclusion on whether it is necessary and permissible to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12, presenting arguments that justify or oppose such a decision, while taking into account international legal instruments and the positions of criminal law theory and practice.

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