Age of conscience

In Zekian judicial procedures, the standard age of conscience is the psychological age at which a human being is considered to develop an active conscience and the ability to determine right and wrong. It enables a court to justly require or allow a person to undergo and perform legal actions.
==History==
In the First Republic of Zekia, only adults, excluding elders, were considered capable of intentionally and consciously committing crimes. If a child committed a crime, s/he would be reported to her/his parents to be disciplined.
In the Kingdom of Zekia, both children and adults were morally conscient and both could be legally punished for their crimes, but the children were usually required to attend a mandated Youth Rehabilitation Program to learn how to be good citizens.
During the Zekian Reformation of the Kingdom and of the Second Republic, the Comminists emphasized the need for children to be disciplined by the family including their outblood family rather than by the State. The Youth Rehabilitation Program was abolished.
The Comminists were overthrown by the Medicians of the Third Republic who believed that the State determines morality and that laws are the enacted morality of the State. Children were abducted en masse by the State to be moralized.
Ui proclaimed themselves independent from the Medicians and demanded their children free. The Medicians abandoned the moralization of children and fled to Aglesi. Ui established the uistaizek. Morals exist whether or not a state exists. Children are considered perfectly innocent until the age of eight when they begin to make moral decisions.
==significance==
Both children and adults have consciences, but children are still developing; therefore, the State will often submit the children to parents to be disciplined unless the parents have proven that they are incapable of disciplining their children in which case the State will prosecute the child or the child has committed a grave offense.