📋 Tender Overview
The spring conference of justice ministers addressed the age of criminal responsibility, the criminal liability of calls for the establishment of a caliphate and the establishment of a cyber trading platform.
At the spring conference of justice ministers in Hanover, Baden-Württemberg tabled a motion to address issues related to lowering the age of criminal responsibility. In recent years, crime by under-14s has increased considerably. In 2023, it reached a 10-year high in Baden-Württemberg with 10,610 suspects. At the same time, the age of criminal responsibility dates back to 1923 and is therefore a legal policy determination that is already over 100 years old. Despite this, and although shocking cases keep coming to light, the motion to commission a study on the current state of developmental psychology and criminological research did not find a majority.
Justice Minister Marion Gentges said: "We need a scientific basis to assess the level of development of children under 14 today. Children and young people today may be in a different situation than they were a hundred years ago. I regret that this important debate is being blocked. The Greens, SPD and Left Party are already refusing to commission a scientific study on the level of development of children under 14. At the same time, the federal traffic light coalition is demanding that the voting age be lowered for all elections. Being able to vote at 16, but not even having to answer for your own crimes two or three years before that, that doesn't fit together."
Criminalize public calls for the establishment of a caliphate
In addition, Baden-Württemberg, as a co-applicant with Bavaria, campaigned for public calls for the establishment of a caliphate in Germany to be made a criminal offence. The justice ministers decided to ask the responsible federal justice minister to examine legislative options, in particular by supplementing substantive criminal law, for cases in which extremists call for disregard of the free democratic basic order. Justice Minister Marion Gentges commented: "During the debate, I had in mind in particular Islamists who publicly demand the establishment of a caliphate. The call for a caliphate is aimed at disregarding and abolishing our free democratic basic order. With their demands and high-profile stagings, the extremists are targeting the basis of our state, our society and our coexistence in Germany. When some argue that these people and their behaviour should not be taken too seriously, I respond: We cannot take these demands and dangers seriously enough!"
Establishment of a cyber trading platform
Another successful initiative, together with Bavaria, was aimed at setting up a central information platform for the cyber trading phenomenon at the Federal Criminal Police Office. In view of the large number of constantly changing fraudulent online presences in the area of ??cyber trading, the cross-border and international aspects of the investigations and the large number of leads and investigative approaches, the Ministers of Justice advocated bundling information from various investigations and thus optimizing the exchange of information between the law enforcement authorities. This is intended to ensure that all known investigative approaches are exhausted and that connections between different platforms and crime complexes are recognized and uncovered at an early stage.
Criminal responsibility
Section 19 of the Criminal Code assumes that persons under the age of 14 (children) do not have the mental and moral maturity to understand that the crime they have committed is wrongful. In formal terms, Section 19 of the Criminal Code represents an obstacle to proceedings, with the result that pending proceedings against minors must be discontinued in accordance with Section 170 Paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In comparison with other European countries, Germany is roughly in the middle range with this age limit.
If the age of criminal responsibility were lowered, this would not mean that all children above the specified age would automatically be held criminally responsible. As is already the case with 14-year-olds, courts would examine each specific case to see whether a 13-year-old boy or girl was mature enough to understand the wrongfulness of their actions and only then would they be held criminally responsible. The only question is at what age the courts should be able to examine each individual case.
