The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility

This project proposal is aimed at investigating some questions concerning to criminal responsibility of juveniles. There is no doubt that the minimum age should be established by law, but boundaries of it are controversial. Depending on culture, historical development and other factors there is a divergence between the minimum age of criminal responsibility in different countries: somewhere it is 8 years and somewhere 18 years. In the Russian criminal law there is a strict criteria for bringing a person to criminal liability: reaching 16 years as a general rule or 14 years for certain types of crimes. The basis for the present study is provided by a large body of literature on various aspects of the age of criminal responsibility. There were many valuable works written by different specialists: teachers, psychologists, criminologists and others. The issue of this project is to analyze completely the minimum age of criminal responsibility and to determine applicable factors of its establishing.