A court of law in Hong Kong heard a trial early this month over a criminal case involving the rape of a 13-year-old girl. The defendant, however, couldn't be charged with rape because he was, like the victim, only 13 years old when he committed the crime.

According to the local criminal code, nobody under 14 can be prosecuted for such a crime.

Less than 10 days later, two 10-year-old primary school boys were arrested for sexually assaulting a female classmate.

Such appalling juvenile crimes do not only happen in Hong Kong.

The most famous, or infamous, case was probably the cold-blooded murder of the 2-year-old toddler James Bulger who was kidnapped in Merseyside, England in 1993 by two 10-year-old boys. He was brutally tortured before his body was left on a railway track to be run over by a train. After heated debate, the two young killers were sentenced to eight years in prison.

These heinous crimes involving perpetrators of shockingly young age have led us to reflect on such questions as whether children should be held criminally responsible when they commit a crime and what the age of criminal responsibility should be.

In Hong Kong, this age has been set at 10, while the mainland, Taiwan and the UK fix it at 14.

Opinions vary in the international community.

Children's rights groups tend to call for the raising of the age of criminal responsibility. Champions of this cause argue that putting children who have broken the law into prison is not an effective deterrent because they cannot understand the consequences of their actions. Nor will the punishment help them get the counseling they need so badly to re-enter society. They may even learn more criminal skills from their fellow inmates.

Some governments have lowered the age for criminal responsibility in view of the increase in juvenile crimes in recent years. France has lowered the age from 15 to 13; Greece and the Netherlands to 12.

According to Hong Kong Security Bureau statistics, crimes committed by juveniles under the age of 14 are on the rise in the territory. And a Ministry of Justice report in 2005 revealed the same trend on the mainland.

We seem to be facing a dilemma.

If the law cannot protect innocent citizens from child criminals, who can? What if the young rapists repeat the crime if they not jailed? Will society feel justice is being undermined if we spare them after they have done something so seriously wrong?

But if we put juvenile criminals behind bars, what will happen to them in jail and when they are discharged from prison or detention centers? Are we doing them and society at large more harm than good? These are hard questions to answer.

There are certainly a host of factors that may contribute to this social malady, such as unrestricted access to the Internet and faults in the education system.

Parents must shoulder a considerable portion of the responsibility for juvenile crime. Who else can instill in our children their initial values? Who act as behavior models? Who has the responsibility to oversee their conduct and character development? Who ought to watch closely whom their children make friends with and correct them when they are showing signs of going astray?

So when we ask: If a child criminal is not responsible for his crime, who is? The answer is "parents".

A juvenile delinquent's parents should be punished for failing their duties and be imprisoned with their children to ensure they won't learn something bad behind bars.

This may not be in line with the legal principle that a person is responsible for his own actions, but isn't it a reasonable proposition?

E-mail: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk

(China Daily 06/22/2007 page10)