The General Secretary of Germany’s conservative CDU party has called for the country’s age of criminal responsibility to be lowered from 14 to 12.
Carsten Linnemann told the Welt TV channel that “if something happens to 13-year-olds every week or every month, then we have to react.”
He pointed out that Switzerland has lowered the limit, and that he was “clearly in favour of twelve years.”
His comments follow an incident in the southern city of Stuttgart last week, in which a 13-year-old is said to have pushed a 12-year-old against an incoming train after an argument. The child was killed.
Because of his age, the 13-year-old is not criminally liable and therefore cannot be prosecuted.
Linnemann said that lowering the age would not solve “all problems”, but that every day on which such a reduction prevented a crime was “a good day for Germany – and that’s why we should do it”.
So far, he said, people had always gone back to business as usual after such cases. “And I don’t think that’s right.”