Labour’s proposal to consider raising the age of criminal responsibility - the age at which a child can be held legally responsible for a crime and prosecuted through the criminal justice system - from 10 is one of those ideas that sounds compassionate at first glance.
To be fair, there is a serious and humane concern sitting behind this proposal: criminalising children has profound and lasting consequences. A criminal record at a young age can derail education, permanently damage life chances and harden behaviour rather than improve it.
The current age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10. Labour is reportedly considering moving it to 12, or potentially higher, bringing us closer to Scotland and international recommendations – although, as we all know, the fact someone else does something is no reason for us to unquestioningly do the same.
There is a respectable argument for caution before prosecuting children, because once criminalised, there is a high chance that such a child will spend the rest of their lives in the criminal justice system, at immense harm to society, as well as themselves.
Once criminalised, a child has a dark stain upon their record: harder to employ, harder to settle down to a productive life as a responsible member of society.
But there is also a very strong argument that raising the age of criminal responsibility is something to approach with enormous care.
The political problem hardly needs stating: Britons remember Jamie Bulger. They remember Mary Bell.
These are exceptional, horrifying cases – and it is true, as lawyers say, that “hard cases make bad law” - but they matter because they remind us that children can sometimes commit terrible acts. The law cannot simply pretend otherwise, and if they do, society needs to have a course of action under the rule of law.
At a time when public concern over lawlessness is rising, it is an unusual course of conduct for a government to send a message appearing to remove responsibility for criminal acts from young people – even if incrementally.
There is also a deeper philosophical point here. Law is partly about punishment, but it is also about moral agency. At some point, society has to say that actions have consequences and that individuals, even young individuals, bear responsibility for serious wrongdoing.
James Bulger's murder must not be a battering ram to raise the age of criminality | PA
Raise the threshold too high, and you risk creating precisely the wrong signal: that young teenagers can commit serious offences without meaningful accountability.
This is even more the case when the concerns of societal changes on childhood are growing: there is an argument that childhood today is not extending further into adolescence, but, if anything, ending earlier.
Children are – tragically for us all - exposed to violence, pornography, social media radicalisation and organised criminality at younger and younger ages.
For example, county lines gangs know exactly what they are doing when they recruit children. They understand perfectly well that younger offenders are treated differently by the system. We should not be naïve about that reality.
Whilst this is a complicated, cross-society phenomenon with no easy cure, it is counter-intuitive to push the age at which children are responsible for criminal acts further into the distance, at the same time when the pressures they are facing are causing the age at which they cease to be children further forward.
Acting in this way would clearly risk damaging already frail public confidence. But it would also risk damaging vulnerable children, too. Boundaries matter. Intervention matters.
Sometimes the involvement of the justice system is exactly what breaks a destructive path early enough to change it, and we must do much more to ensure that rehabilitation is effective and central to youth justice.
A civilised society should want young offenders to turn their lives around, not to become permanent members of a criminal underclass. But that is not the same thing as pretending serious offending by children does not exist, or that society has no right to respond to it.
Of course, there is room for reform, but there are probably better ways to deal with the problem that the government is trying to confront. Firstly, prosecution is not necessarily automatic now - a point missed by many campaigners.
The Crown Prosecution Service already applies a two-stage test before bringing charges. First, is there sufficient evidence in the form of a realistic prospect of conviction? Second, is prosecution actually in the public interest?
That second limb matters enormously and is an area where increased guidance could well be given. For example, a child may plainly have committed an offence, but prosecution may nevertheless be inappropriate for other, surrounding circumstances.
The system therefore already contains discretion, flexibility and protection where prosecutors, police and courts apply it properly. That public interest test could function better as the safety valve that prevents crude or excessive criminalisation, rather than removing criminal responsibility from entire age groups.
The answer, therefore, may not be to abolish responsibility but to use judgement better.
There is also a perfectly sensible debate to be had about the disclosure requirements for childhood offences, particularly minor ones. Labour is also considering changes there, and that may well be a better course, depending on the offences considered.
There is a world of difference between a foolish, relatively minor act at 11 and branding someone forever unemployable at 40.
The danger in modern policymaking is that we increasingly confuse compassion with the removal of responsibility altogether: the two are not the same. We need a criminal justice system that is capable of both mercy and accountability.