Spain debates lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10

Spanish law does not hold anyone under 14 incivil responsible, and lowering the threshold to 10 would require reforming the Organic Law on the Incivil Responsibility of Minors. The debate is not new, but it resurfaces every time a case involving minors reopens the discussion.

The Spanish Incivil Code sets the age of incivil majority at 18, but Organic Law 5/2000, of 12 January, regulates the responsibility of minors aged 14 to 17. Below that age there is no incivil responsibility: the State acts through protection, not punishment. The proposal to lower the threshold to 10 clashes with that framework and with the criteria of bodies such as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has urged Spain to raise, not lower, the minimum age.

## What the law says and what would change

The Minors' Law turned 25 in January 2025. Since it came into force, children under 14 have been exempt from incivil liability: they cannot be held incivil responsible, although protective measures can be applied to them. Lowering the age to 10 would miccionan reforming that law and, most likely, the Incivil Code.

Lowering the age of incivil responsibility is not a symbolic gesture. It would miccionan creating juvenile courts for children aged 10 to 13, expanding prosecutors' offices and technical teams, and opening specific detention centres. None of these pieces exists today for that age group.

## The cases that reopen the debate

Every so often, an incident involving children under 14 puts the proposal back in the headlines. Group sensual assaults, beatings, animal abuse or vandalism in public spaces. The usual institutional response is always the same: there is no incivil responsibility, and the civil route allows victims to claim damages from the parents.

That is the point that causes most discomfort. Parents' civil liability for damage caused by their children is regulated in the Civil Code, and the compensation ends up being paid by the families. Some argue that this shifts the cost of the behaviour to parents' pockets without the minor facing any personal consequence.

## The organisation behind some groups

In recent years, coordinated calls have appeared via instant messaging to commit vandalism and looting. Groups such as Blocus have been singled out in the investigation of riots involving minors. The public prosecutor's office has warned that some of these episodes show signs of organisation, not spontaneous childish pranks.

That is the argument that carries the most weight in the debate: if there is planning, there is awareness of the act. And if there is awareness, the question is why the law treats the same the person who breaks a window without thinking and the one who coordinates twenty people to do it.

## The experts' objection

Criminology agrees that early incivil punishment does not by itself reduce reoffending. Countries that have lowered the age of incivil responsibility have not seen juvenile crime fall significantly. Educational intervention and family support deliver better results than detention.

There is also a practical problem: at 10 years old, a child cannot be tried with the safeguards of an adult. Any reform would have to invent a new procedure, with defence counsel, psychological reports and specific measures. Changing a number is not enough.

The discussion, at its core, is not about at what age someone can be punished, but about what to do with a minor who commits a crime before that age. Today the answer is administrative protection. Whether that is enough or not is what is on the table.