AGE LIMITS OF JUVENILE CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY IN COMPARATIVE LAW

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative legal overview of the juvenile age of criminal responsibility as an age framework in which young people enjoy a special (privileged) criminal status due to their immaturity. When it comes to the lower limit as minimum age of criminal responsibility, comparative legal solutions are different and they range from six or seven years in some countries, up to eighteen years in other. In most European countries, the age limit is set at the age of 14, which is the minimum age of criminal capacity proposed by UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In comparative law the significance of the age limit is relativized by prescribing two or more such age limits (depending on the gravity of the crime or due to the application of the doli capax doctrine), as well as other legal solutions. On the other hand, in most countries, juvenile criminal responsibility lasts until the age of eighteen, although in some states in the United States and some other non-European countries it ends earlier. The importance of the age limit in some legislations is relativized by the possibilities of applying juvenile criminal law to young adults, but also through the possibility of referring minors to the criminal courts of general jurisdiction (“adult courts”) even before the age of criminal majority. In the paper was analyzed international legal standards related to these issues, as well as legislative solutions in the countries of the region. In conclusion it was stated that the legal solutions contained in juvenile criminal legislation of the countries of the former SFR Yugoslavia are harmonized with international standards in this area.