For Hofinger, this would be “absolutely just legislation” and not expedient. The judges do not consider imprisonment to be a primarily suitable means of combating child and juvenile crime.
“We are unanimously convinced that lowering the limit of criminal responsibility leads to nothing. Experience shows that a twelve-year-old often does not recognize the injustice of his actions or does not act with guilt or insight,” said Andreas Hautz, board member of the specialist group and since Worked as a juvenile judge in Vienna for 25 years. In order to dissuade children from criminal behavior, “prevention and street work are the right means. Locking children up, on the other hand, does nothing,” said Hautz in an interview with the APA.
The juvenile criminal law specialist group within the judges’ association also emphasizes that the number of reports filed by young people has increased in recent years. However, convictions have declined.
For Veronika Hofinger from the University of Innsbruck, it is hardly surprising that Nehammer went public with his proposal following the fate of a twelve-year-old girl who was said to have been abused by a total of 17 boys as children and teenagers in Vienna became known. The suspects include two young people who were under 14 years old at the time of the crime. However, the criminal sociologist believes that it would be wrong to think regarding punishing underage children in the future. “Criminal law is not the instrument that has the preventive effect that one imagines in populist debates,” said Hofinger.
Punishments are “not the right means”
Punishments are “not the right way” to counteract the misbehavior of 12 or 13-year-olds. This is why there are youth welfare organizations and other institutions that deal with children and young people. “Criminal law, on the other hand, is relatively unimaginative. It has been proven that criminal law does not control behavior as much as one would imagine,” the expert told the APA.
Helmut Sachs from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute described any lowering of the existing criminal responsibility limit as a “clear violation of children’s rights” in the “Ö1 Mittagsjournal”. In the case of under-14-year-olds, it is primarily “the parents’ responsibility to influence their children appropriately and do educational work to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen.” Child and youth welfare services and youth welfare offices would also be available to provide support if there are indications that children’s well-being is at risk.
