Jim Gamble: Wrong question is being asked in criminal age of responsibility debate

​As the former chief executive of CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection), I resigned from that post because I believed the home secretary of the day had failed to put children first.

I am not, and never have been, someone who wishes to criminalise children. Having authored and commissioned numerous independent safeguarding reviews and child safeguarding practice reviews, I understand the complexities of child development and the profound challenges, trauma, and neglect that many vulnerable young people face.

It is from that safeguarding perspective, and no other, that I approach the current debate in Northern Ireland about the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

The debate as it stands presents a false choice. Maintain the existing age of 10 or raise it to 14. The desire for reform is understandable. Modern understanding of child development, combined with legitimate concerns about over-criminalising vulnerable children, makes 10 look uncomfortable against international norms. But a binary choice between two blunt thresholds ignores a far more proportionate alternative.

Rather than removing accountability entirely for children under 14, Northern Ireland should consider reviving a modernised form of doli incapax. This long-standing legal principle applies a presumption that children between 10 and 13 lack the maturity to be held criminally responsible. To proceed with a prosecution, the state would have to demonstrate that the child understood their actions were seriously wrong, rather than merely impulsive or mischievous.

It is a high bar and rightly so.

This approach offers meaningful protection for vulnerable children while ensuring that a small number of genuinely serious cases do not fall entirely outside any framework of accountability. Serious offending by young children is rare, and the vast majority will never come near such behaviour.

However, a small cohort does cause disproportionate harm, frequently while dealing with trauma, neglect, or neurodevelopmental difficulties. A blanket increase in the age threshold could strip away the very statutory mechanisms that allow for structured, protective intervention where it is needed most.

There is also the reality of exploitation. Organised criminal networks across the United Kingdom are already targeting children to transport drugs, carry weapons, and carry out intimidation, precisely because younger children carry lower legal risk. A rigid exclusion from criminal responsibility below 14 risks strengthening that incentive. It would make the most vulnerable children even more attractive to gangs.

The world children live in has also changed. Young people today have the digital literacy to orchestrate serious harm. Online harassment, image-based abuse, and coordinated intimidation can be carried out by children who are technologically capable but developmentally immature. Removing all legal accountability below 14 risks eliminating any meaningful deterrent against actions with immediate and serious real-world consequences.

We have seen what happens when policy is driven by public horror rather than evidence. When England and Wales abolished doli incapax in the late 90s, the decision was heavily shaped by the murder of James Bulger. That grief and rage were entirely human responses.

But the policy shift that followed moved away from individualised assessment towards rigid age rules, and it is worth asking honestly whether that served children or communities well in the long run. Even countries with a higher age of criminal responsibility routinely maintain exceptions for grave offences or use secure welfare detention for the most serious cases. They understand that some young people, whatever their age, require substantial intervention to protect both themselves and the public.

The procedural route being used to advance this reform in Northern Ireland demands equal scrutiny. Changes of this magnitude are being progressed as piecemeal amendments to a broader Justice Bill. That is not good enough. Altering the legal accountability of children is a fundamental shift that warrants its own legislative framework, ideally a dedicated Youth Justice Bill. Without a bespoke plan that maps out the diversionary programmes and welfare interventions required, this risks becoming an ideological administrative exercise dressed up as reform.

Then there is the logical flaw at the heart of the current proposals. Many versions include caveats for specific grave offences such as murder or rape. But those exceptions collapse the entire developmental argument.

You cannot credibly argue that a child lacks the cognitive maturity to understand a minor infraction, yet simultaneously possesses the intent and culpability required for a grave crime. The inconsistency is not subtle. It reveals that the exceptions are driven by the severity of the offence and public anxiety, not by any coherent reading of a child’s actual understanding.

If the developmental argument is sound, it should apply consistently. If it cannot, the entire framework requires rethinking.

Northern Ireland has the opportunity to avoid this trap. We do not have to choose between harmful criminalisation and total legal immunity. A rebuttable presumption of doli incapax offers a proportionate middle ground, one that allows the justice system to respond with both compassion and rigour.

I understand why some political representatives feel they are being railroaded. The sense that a flawed framework is being pushed through without adequate scrutiny is not paranoia; it is a reasonable reading of the process. The discussion around a Petition of Concern reflects just how seriously some members take what is at stake.

I share that concern, and I also recognise the genuine ethical discomfort of those who do not wish to weaponise that mechanism and feel it is wrong to be placed in a position where using it becomes the only means of insisting on proper scrutiny. No representative should have to choose between their principles about consensus-based governance and their duty to the children this legislation will affect. But when those two values collide, the overriding ethical obligation must be what is best for children and the society within which they live. When the welfare of children and the safety of communities are both on the line, procedural shortcuts are not a minor inconvenience. They are a failure of responsibility.

Good law is always preferable to bad law. That is not a complicated principle. But it requires political courage to insist on it when there is pressure to move quickly. Northern Ireland’s children, and the communities they grow up in, deserve nothing less.

l Jim Gamble QPM, former chief executive, CEOP; chief executive, INEQE Safeguarding Group