child homicide
Descriptive term for the killing of a child, prosecuted under straffeloven § 237
Child homicide is not an independent criminal law concept in Danish law, but a descriptive label for the killing of a child, which is in principle dealt with under the ordinary rules on manslaughter. When a child is killed, the offence is subsumed under the Danish Penal Code (straffeloven) § 237, which defines manslaughter as killing another person and sets a penalty range of imprisonment from 5 years up to life.
The age of the victim is not in itself a qualifying circumstance within § 237, but it may be taken into account in the specific determination of the sentence, including the assessment of the gravity of the act and any aggravating circumstances.
A particular exception applies under straffeloven § 238, which governs the situation where a mother kills her own newborn child during or immediately after birth. This provision is historically grounded in a recognition that the mother in this extraordinary situation may be in a psychologically and physically strained condition, and it carries a lower penalty range than § 237.
In case law and in criminological and crime-journalistic literature, the term child homicide is used as an analytical and descriptive expression covering cases of the killing of minors, even though such cases are legally assigned to the ordinary homicide provisions.
