Crime? What crime?

One of my abiding memories from my schooldays was something a very good teacher we had was wont to say from time to time, when he felt we needed a dose of reality. "You can pin a note on an elephant saying - this is a giraffe" he would say, "but it don't make it so". The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority have agreed to pay out compensation to the family of a three-year-old child who was attacked and badly hurt by another three-year-old. I'm OK with the fact that they are getting compensation but not that they are getting it from this Authority. A three-year-old child is statutorily incapable of committing a crime - therefore there was and could be no crime, and therefore payment of compensation does not fall within the remit of the Authority. Of course, it is always open to Parliament to change the Authority's terms of reference, but until and unless they do this is another case, I'm afraid, of hard cases making bad law.