"If you lock up a 12-year-old child, you will most likely turn them into a delinquent"

BarcelonaThe Olympic Village murderer earned this nickname the night he was celebrating his 18th birthday. A few hours made the difference between being tried as a minor or as an adult —as happened with the rest of those involved in the beating to death of a 24-year-old in a car park. It was April 1, 2000, and only four months had passed since the law on criminal responsibility of minors had been approved, with a less punitive model focused on education and reintegration. Now, this norm has once again faced pressure from the far-right and victims' families to increase criminal penalties for minors who commit extremely violent crimes, murders, or rapes.

It is

the case of Sílvia Guerrero, mother of an 18-year-old young man murdered by a 17-year-old adolescent, in Lleida. She and other families have handed over 130,000 signatures to Congress to toughen sentences in these cases. ARA reported on Guerrero's case after the accused of the homicide was released before the trial, having served the maximum nine months of precautionary detention provided by law for minors. But what do experts think about the possibility of toughening the minor's law?

"Many ideologues from the far-right or with very traditional ideologies say that if we lower the penal age, the crimes committed by young people will end. And this is a big mistake," states Antonio Andrés Pueyo, professor of psychology and criminology at the University of Barcelona (UB). The expert is categorical: "If you lock up a 12-year-old child in a juvenile center, the most likely thing is that you will turn them into a lifelong criminal, because you alter their development." In this regard, he says that, fortunately, in Spain, educational measures that do not involve confinement are prioritized.

In this debate —which could be transferred to the political sphere—, the president of the Childhood and Adolescence section of the Barcelona Bar Association (Icab), Xavier Campà, also takes a stand against it. "It is not true that the more punishment [is imposed], the less incidence or less recidivism there will be in crime," he says. The jurist finds the reaction of victims of serious crimes or families affected by a crime committed by a minor understandable, but also warns of the risk of "regressing" in the protection of children's rights, which are also guaranteed by international organizations. Campà recalls that the position of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urges to avoid deprivation of liberty measures for minors and to prioritize educational alternatives. In fact, the detention of minors is for a maximum of eight years, unlike adults, who can receive much higher prison sentences.

When do we become adults?

The key is to know when a child, or an adolescent, becomes an adult, points out Pueyo. For the law, the cutoff point is fourteen years old. Below this age, no criminal responsibility is attributed. Adolescents between 14 and 18 years old are required to have "partial" responsibility, with a juvenile justice system that primarily tries to re-educate them and help them reintegrate, understanding that they have a greater capacity to change their behavior if they receive educational and social support. This premise is the case in Spain, but also in other countries that set an age for criminal responsibility.

However, Pueyo sees this method as "insufficient" and explains that in Germany and the Netherlands, "developmental age" prevails, which is determined by a case-by-case assessment. That is, they not only look at the "numerical" age but also at their real level of psychological and social maturity. According to the expert, this criterion allows for "better individualization" and takes into account factors that influence more than age. These are factors such as whether the adolescent lives with their parents, whether they work, whether they have a partner, or whether they have had to assume responsibilities within the family. "A sixteen-year-old girl is not the same as a boy, and the law does not take this into account either," he exemplifies.

Furthermore, Pueyo explains that adolescence has lengthened and that, in general, some adult activities such as working or becoming independent are being assumed later and later. Also, although the opposite belief is widespread, he states that the age of initiation for consuming alcohol and drugs, going out at night, and having sexual relations has been delayed. "If we compare it with the 1970s, there are very rigorous studies that indicate that they start later now than ever before, contrary to what most people believe," he concludes. In his opinion, proposals to reduce the penal age with the argument of numerical adulthood are ideological, not scientific, reasons.

What did the juvenile law mean?

"We cannot go back on what has been gained", states Campà in reference to the advances made by the minor's law in 2000. "It is a protective law and it represented a paradigm shift", she adds. Penal lawyer specialized in the defense of minors, Marta Vergés, agrees, defining it as an "absolutely necessary law" for the guarantee of children's rights. "It allowed young people and their families to have a clear framework of reference regarding the criminal consequences of their actions and the applicable procedure when a crime was committed", argues the lawyer from the DeLMenor firm.

Until then, explains Campà, the Penal Code considered minors under 16 to be unaccountable –now the cutoff is 14–, even though "minors from 16 to 18 were also not subject to the adult Penal Code", but were handled by the old juvenile guardianship courts. "The reality is that they were admitted to reformatories until they were 21 years old. They stayed there without any guarantees or rights," he adds. Six years after the minor's law began to be applied, it was reformed and some measures were toughened, such as an extension of the duration of confinement in closed regimes for serious crimes: it went from five years to a maximum of eight.

Vergés recalls that the reform "responded above all to strong social pressure" after some high-profile cases, such as the cruel murder of the young woman from Madrid Sandra Palo by four young people, three of them minors, or that of Rosario Endrinal, a homeless woman who was burned alive inside an ATM by a minor and two adults. "A very intense public debate was generated about juvenile delinquency and the idea that minors had to respond more severely for the crimes they committed," recalls the lawyer. While awareness of the need to protect victims grew, the "punishment discourse" also gained strength.

Vergés recalls that both the media and some political sectors conveyed the idea that minors were practically immune from punishment, and this contributed to justifying a toughening of criminal measures. However, both she and Campà insist that the vulnerability of minors who end up in the justice system must be taken into account. The lawyer assures that in a very high percentage of cases —"probably around 85%", she says— they have very complex family situations or some disorder.

This does not justify the crimes in any way, but it helps to explain them, says the expert. "Many times it seems that they end up being doubly punished. First because the State has not been able to protect them adequately during their childhood and then because the system condemns them without offering them a real opportunity for personal reconstruction," she concludes.