Minimum punishment age could be raised to 12
Department of Juvenile Observation and Protection chief Thawatchai Thaikhiew will propose on January 26 a legal amendment that would raise the minimum age at which juvenile offenders can be punished to 12 from 10.
The proposal is aimed at bringing Thai law in line with recommendations by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
Later this year, a programme will be implemented in an effort to determine the factors that lead youths to commit crimes, Thawatchai said. In cases where it could be clearly determined that parents played a role in causing youths to offend, the department will ask the judge to consider revoking their parental rights, he added.
Revealing that the number of crimes committed by youths in 2011 was down from 2010, he said it wasn’t because youths were committing fewer crimes but because the current law required police to notify suspects of charges, rather than arrest them. The largest category of juvenile crimes (33.25 per cent) was drug-related offences, an increase from the previous year’s 21 per cent, and children in the three southernmost provinces were involved in more drug offences than their peers in other regions, he added.
