You aren’t criminally responsible for anything under the age of 14? Are the parents?
What about very serious crimes like murder or rape?
The attorneys can argue the law to us; in the trials that I took part the in most cases the opposing party wasn’t minded to oppose the motion, and the professional judges weren’t minded to deny it, so we Schöffen nodded and went along. Otherwise we discussed it with the professional judges during a short break (the decision whether to jail people after sentencing, pending appeal, was discussed in our sentencing deliberations and the professional judges explained the legal criteria for that). My impression was that the professional judges tended to grant any motion to introduce further witnesses/evidence, if at all reasonable, to avoid leaving a hook that an appeal could be hung on. (The defendants’ attorneys introduced some further witnesses whose testimony didn’t do their clients any good but at least served to lighten the mood - “Do you have a prior conviction for perjury? - Prior convicion? Only the animal one - The animal one? - You see we were a bit enthusiastic when playing with the hamster (oh, and the small sexual molestation rap)” - leaving the audience to fantasize about the witness sexually molesting a hamster. At this point the judge asked the witness to stick to the case in question). We didn’t have to decide on excluding any evidence.
No, there is no criminal responsibility under age 14 (some local cops have been known to design a stylish certificate as a reminder that they are now criminally responsible, as a 14th birthday present to certain kids they know all too well).
Parents are criminally responsible only of they are connected to the actual crime, say in a Fagin-type setup.
Civil liability is less restricted than that (but a child usually has no assets to take).
When a child does serious crimes and the parents are unable or unwilling to keep them in check the family court (that’s responsible for custody matters) can decide to overrule the parents in matters of therapy etc.
Wow. So a 13 year old who rapes a younger child would be not held criminally responsible because of their age? What would the court do in that situation? I realize you might not be able to tell me, but I’m curious as I work with juvenile offenders in the US and we get a number of kids under 14 years of age.
My other question is… when offenders do actually serve a sentence, do they get held in separate facilites from the adults?
Yes, they would not be held criminally responsible (there have been a couple of notorious cases in the last decades, but they have not been rape/murder etc. but serial joyriding/robbery/burglary)
Yes, there are separate juvenile penitentiaries (I took part in a day tour to one two years ago). Prison conditions are mostly like in the adult prisons, except that there is a focus on education as opposed to work for most of the inmates - they can be paid by the hour to visit the prison school (most of them had dropped out outside) and get their Hauptschule certificate, or those who have finished school can serve an apprenticeship in a few crafts. Persistent problems are mostly the same as with adults, particularly the drug problem.
Thanks for answering. That sounds similiar to what we have.
Can parents be sued for the actions of their children?
Interesting thread, thanks tschild.
I have also been a lay judge or Nämndeman as it is called here in Sweden and it seems there are quite a few similarities in how the system works but also some interesting differences.
I would like to ask you how often it happens that you or the other Schöffe vote against the professional judge(s)?
Only if there was negligence on the parents’ part i.e. failure to supervise a child as required for a child of that age (eg.: three year old playing with matches: parents liable because child should have been continually supervised. Twelve year old playing with matches: parents usually not liable because they could not have been expected to continually supervise a twelve-year-old.)
In my small experience, this isn’t likely to happen very often - we usually shaped a consensus rather than doing a contested vote. What’s generally the case is unknowable because the deliberations of the judges’ panel are confidential so there can be no statistics.