... and punishment

The crime stole headlines across Britain and around the world: In Liverpool, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables brutally tortured a two-year-old boy, James Bulger, to death. Shockingly, the perpetrators were just 10 years old. And that revelation was followed by another shock: the child perpetrators were to be tried as adults for their actions.

But as controversial as the 1996 trial was, it had almost faded into obscurity, until earlier this month, when news broke that Venables - who had served out his sentence and was living under an assumed identity - had been arrested once again, this time for breaking the terms of his parole.

Debate over justice for minors

The case has reignited a public debate in Britain over how best to deal with young offenders, and raises questions about the appropriate age for them to face justice, and the value of rehabilitation versus punishment.

A recent case in Germany has brought similar issues to light. Earlier this month, two 13-year-old boys were found to have gruesomely tortured an 83-year-old Munich woman.

The pair forced Edeltraud B., who suffers from dementia, to drink a half a liter of schnapps. They beat her, sprayed shaving cream into her mouth, poured spices in her eyes and urinated on her while she lay on the ground.

The torment is believed to have lasted "for several hours," chief detective Frank Hellwig told reporters at the time.

Unlike James Bulger, Edeltraud B. survived. And there is another difference: in contrast to Venables and Thompson, the teens from Munich won't be tried for their actions. In Germany, children under age 14 are not considered criminally accountable.

The difference emphasizes the gaps among some European countries when it comes to dealing with young offenders - and with attitudes towards crime and punishment in general.

England has the lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe - 10 years. In most other European states, that age - which determines when a child can go to trial - is set at 14.

Age limit alone is not decisive

Germany is "somewhere in the middle when you compare European countries," says Torsten Verrel, a professor in the Department of Criminology and Juvenile Justice at the University of Bonn.

However, Verrel said, the age limit for trials alone doesn't measure how well a country deals with juvenile justice.

"There are lots of other differences. Not just whether or not they put youths on trial, but other things, like the harshness of the sentencing or what other options are available."

England's law that 10-year-olds can stand trial "is extreme," Verrel said.

Dieter Doelling, a professor at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Heidelberg, agrees. By age 14 "kids can generally say they know what they were doing" when they commit a crime, Doelling asserts.

Help, not punishment, is the goal

"The younger [the perpetrators] get, the harder it gets to say if they could decide between right and wrong, and - this is also important - whether or not they were masters of their own actions."

Germany has a multi-tiered system when it comes to trying juveniles. Children under age 14 who commit major crimes aren't sent to trial - but they can be dealt with by psychiatric or youth services organizations. Between the ages of 14 and 18, youths are tried according to a juvenile penal code, which has milder punishments. From 18 to 21, offenders are considered young adults, which also affects sentencing.

For offenders under 14, "the basic idea is to get help for the child, rather than punishment," says Lukas Pieplow, a Cologne-based defense attorney who specializes in juvenile offenders.

Pieplow believes the system works well because it looks at each offender as an individual, taking their background and psychological testing into account, and - unlike in the case of offenders over age 21 - provides individual sentencing.

"There are a lot of possibilities that grown-up offenders don't have, such as training courses, social-service care situations or taking part in a public works project" as a punishment, he said.

"In general, the system has proved to be a good one. I wouldn't want to change it," he added.

Social services lacking in funds

That kind of intensive help for youth who have gone off the tracks, or who seem to be headed there, is exactly what everyday young offenders need, the experts agreed. But they also said that funding for youth services in Germany often fails to meet society's needs.

"There is in fact a real problem when it comes to treatment," said Doelling of the University of Heidelberg.

"Many of these children should be treated in their own homes, but there isn't enough money. Program funding for social retraining courses is very uneven across the country, and there are big gaps where help is available and where it is not," he said.

Germany is making a grave mistake by failing to allocate spending to youth services, Pieplow added.

"It would be an investment in the future. Prisons are expensive, and we have to see to it that young offenders don't spend their lives in prison. When they are young, we can still set a new course," Pieplow said.

The re-emergence of the Bulger case into the news, timed so closely with the horrifying story of the Munich pensioner, has led many observers to ask whether society hasn't simply reached a new level of depravity that requires an all-new punishment structure.

What's more, they worry about an overall rise in brutal youth crime, and what that would say about "civilized" European society.

Crime statistics are unchanged

But according to statistics, experts say, there is no need to worry. The numbers of reported youth crimes are in fact "stagnant or going down," University of Bonn's Verrel said.

And Doelling agreed, saying that reported youth crime rose through the 1890s and into the early 1900s, but since then it has remained stable. "There is no statistical growth, if you look at the whole of juvenile offenders," he said.

The problem may possibly be that society's reaction to youth crime overall has changed, Verrel said: "In earlier times, people would just turn a blind eye. They said 'Kids will be kids, and we'll deal with this within the community.' I can imagine that people have become more ready to press charges against children."

By far most youth crime consists of small offenses, Verrel added. The big difference today is that the media attention on the truly appalling crimes - which have always existed in small numbers - has grown much more intense and widespread.

Author: Jennifer Abramsohn
Editor: Nancy Isenson