The Age of Culpability

Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility

Bibliographic Data

ID20005779
AuthorsGideon Yaffe (0000-0002-9385-3912, corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages256
Publication date2018-04-19
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueAge of Culpability (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198803324.001.0001
OpenAlexW2802015676
Open LibraryOL30593831M
ISBN9780198803324
LanguageEN
Citations received14

Reflection on the grounds for leniency towards children who commit crimes is the entry point into the development, in this book, of a theory of the nature of criminal responsibility and desert of punishment for crime. The book argues that child criminals are owed lesser punishments than adults thanks not to their psychological, behavioral, or neural immaturity but, instead, because they are denied the vote. This conclusion is reached through the development of theories of the nature of criminal culpability, desert for wrongdoing, strength of legal reasons, and what it is to have a say over the law, theories that produce a bridge between limited participation in government and criminal culpability. The cornerstone of this discussion is the proposed theory of criminal culpability. To be criminally culpable is for one’s criminal act to manifest a failure to grant sufficient weight to the legal reasons to refrain. The stronger the legal reasons, then, the greater the criminal culpability. Those who lack a say over the law, it is argued, have weaker legal reasons to refrain from crime than those who have a say. They are therefore reduced in criminal culpability and deserve lesser punishment for their crimes. Children are owed leniency, then, because of the political meaning of age rather than because of its psychological meaning. This position has implications for criminal justice policy, with respect to, among other things, the interrogation of children suspected of crimes and the enfranchisement of adult felons

Criminal justice · Criminal law · Criminology · Culpability · Political science · Punishment (psychology) · Theory of criminal justice · Wrongdoing · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Free Will and Agency · Law · Law, Rights, and Freedoms · Psychology · Social Psychology · Guilt (law) · Juvenile delinquency · Philosophy

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