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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.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
He pointed out that Switzerland has lowered the limit, and that he was “clearly in favour of twelve years.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Because of his age, the 13-year-old is not criminally liable and therefore cannot be prosecuted.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
So far, he said, people had always gone back to business as usual after such cases. “And I don’t think that’s right.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n