Skip to content

Doli Incapax

Definition

Common-law rebuttable presumption that children aged 10-13 are incapable of criminal intent unless the prosecution proves they knew the act was seriously wrong; abolished in England and Wales by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 § 34.

Related terms

Dual-Systems Model (Steinberg 2008)
Developmental theory proposing that adolescent risk-taking results from an imbalance between an early-maturing socioemotional brain system and a later-maturing cognitive-control system, producing...
JJ Act 2015 § 15
Provision of India's Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 requiring a preliminary forensic-psychological assessment of 16-17 year olds accused...
Kent Factors
Eight criteria articulated in Kent v. United States (1966) for evaluating whether a juvenile should be transferred to adult court, including seriousness...
MAYSI-2
Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Second Version; a brief mental-health screening tool for young people in juvenile justice settings, widely used in US detention...
Miller V. Alabama (2012)
US Supreme Court ruling prohibiting mandatory life-without-parole sentences for offenders who were under 18 at the time of their offence, on the...
Montgomery V. Louisiana (2016)
US Supreme Court ruling applying Miller v. Alabama retroactively to prisoners already serving mandatory life-without-parole sentences imposed for crimes committed as juveniles.
SAVRY (Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth)
24-item structured professional judgement instrument for assessing violence risk in young people aged 12-18, with the strongest multi-jurisdictional validation record of any...

Explained in

Your journey to becoming a forensic professional starts here.

Practice with mock tests, learn from structured notes, and get your questions answered by a global forensic community, all in one place.