The identification of the authors of a group rape of an 11-year-old girl in Badalona, and the certification that three of them are under 14 years of age and therefore unimputable, puts us in an uncomfortable situation. It can be difficult to digest, and even hotter, that the perpetrators of these acts are not criminally responsible for them and remain outside even the field of juvenile justice, and claim their entry into closed centers for minors. Even more so the concept of imputability is confused with that of impunitywhich are not and should not be synonyms.
All civilized penal laws have considered that minors, at ages when they have not yet formed their personality or have a full capacity for discernment, must have differentiated treatment when they commit acts that would be criminal if their protagonists were of legal age. Although the age ranges vary: in Spain, under 12 years between 1992 and 2000, under 14 since the approval on that date of the law on the criminal responsibility of minors. If, even in the case of adults, prison sentences must have re-education and reintegration as their main objective, it is even clearer than in the age group we are talking about, in which the ability to change behavior and help It is much more feasible the response should not be criminal and punitive. It must be educational, at a time when, at inappropriate ages, one is exposed to patterns of domination and sexual violence from pornography. Therapeutics in the field of mental health. Social in the family environment, with the necessary intervention of child care services in cases where there is obvious helplessness. 30% of child poverty does not come free.
However, the response from the strict sphere of the protection of minors may be insufficient. And this is recognized by the Generalitat itself with the operation of a specific program called ‘Educating in responsibility’. The goal of the intervention should be avoid repeating similar behaviors, but to comply with it, it is not enough to work with a view to a resocialization in the future. The fact that the perpetrators of atrocities such as those in Badalona are not guilty or responsible from a criminal point of view does not mean that there is no longer a danger factor and a risk of recurrence. The fact that there is no adequate reaction and that with this they perceive a sensation of impunity does not help at all to avoid this risk of recidivism. That the intervention aims to detect the deficiencies (formative, affective, social) that have led to committing these acts and to solve them should not make us forget the victims’ needs. The first of these, security, which in the case of Badalona has been compromised by threats to the family environment.
The solutions are not walls, doors and keys. But it is worth checking if the resources available for the necessary preventive work are at the level of the current dimensions of the problem (a hundred minors under 12 years of age are perpetrators of sexual assaults in just one year in Catalonia) and if the follow-up measures are sufficient and should entail much tighter control mechanisms. As on so many other occasions, establishing impeccable principles without having the mechanisms to make them a reality leaves the door open to the most visceral reactions.