According to the police statement, a thirteen-year-old stabbed three people during a fight in Čair on 31 August at around 22:00. One of the injured is a boy his own age, stabbed in the heart, who is fighting for his life. No criminal proceedings will be brought against the thirteen-year-old.

Not because there is any doubt that he did it. Because he is thirteen.

Where the law stops

The criminal code and the Law on Justice for Children set a clear boundary: a child under 14 bears no criminal responsibility. No criminal proceedings can be brought against them, no educational measure can be imposed, and they cannot be sent to a correctional institution. The boundary is not discretionary - it is absolute, and the court stops at it regardless of the consequence.

The Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Skopje has opened an investigation against his 19-year-old brother for the criminal offence of violence, and filed a motion for detention. The prosecution states that the two carried out acts that inflicted serious bodily injuries by stabbing on one child and one adult, while a second child was more lightly injured.

"They caused a feeling of insecurity, threat, fear and distress in the public and among those present," the prosecution's statement says.

What comes instead of proceedings

Once the police notify them, responsibility for the thirteen-year-old passes entirely to the local social work centre. Social services can open a procedure to supervise parental rights, order psychosocial support, or counselling work with the family.

Those are measures of assistance and protection - they are not a criminal penalty and not a criminal sanction. The state has no mechanism for the physical isolation of an offender that age, not even when the consequences are on the edge of death.

The question that is not for the court

The age of criminal responsibility is not a Macedonian invention - every legal system sets an age below which a child is not treated as an adult. That is a principle worth defending.

But the principle implies that something else comes instead of punishment - a system that works with the child and the family before and after incidents like this. And that is where the Macedonian story diverges from the European one. When responsibility passes to a social work centre, the question is not whether the law is right, but whether the centre has enough staff, enough psychologists and enough time for the case that landed on its desk yesterday.

Not one institution has so far answered how many cases a single professional handles at Skopje's social work centres. That is the figure that shows what "psychosocial support" actually means in this particular case - and it is a figure that exists, it simply has not been requested.

The thirteen-year-old who was stabbed in the heart is still in hospital. For the thirteen-year-old who stabbed him, there will be no criminal case. Between those two sentences sits one article of law that is correct, and one system that has to carry everything the law does not cover.