Liberal Democrat Justice spokesperson Robert Brown MSP has said that society must be very careful about labelling young children as criminals, as figures released today show a 45% increase in the figure of recorded offences involving young children.
Commenting Robert Brown said:
"This rise in the figure of recorded offences involving young children is hugely concerning.
"It rather suggests significant parental problems behind it and raises the question of why children as young as 3 are in a position to commit such offences, apparently unsupervised.
"We must be extremely careful not to label young children like this as 'criminals' as this is likely to have far reaching negative consequences.
"However local communities are entitled to require that the root causes of these children's' misbehaviour are tackled, and the children's parents held accountable."
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