Young people in conflict with the law

Garry Sali

In early October 2009, I visited a prison institution to see the Commanding Officer to seek his permission to conduct a research on “the capacity of the prisons to keep pace with crime and development”. Though this was my first visit to his office, after some telephone conversation with him, the Commander wasted no time in expressing the prison's need for such a sociological study and guided me into the various sections of the prison administration and inmate cells.

The institution is called Buimo, which is one of the many prisons in Papua New Guinea, located about 5 kilometres northwest of Lae city in the Morobe Province. It is an old, dilapidated and overcrowded prison camp. Those offenders who are arrested, prosecuted and convicted in a court of law in Lae are usually sentenced to imprisonment in this prison. This prison, like all other prison systems in the world, plays the crucial roles of segregation, retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation of the convicted offenders.

Whoever is convicted in the court of law is segregated from the rest of the community and punished in proportion to the nature and seriousness of the crime committed by the offender. This punishment must act as deterrence to those potential criminals out there in the communities. To avoid high frequency of recidivism rate, the prisoners must be properly rehabilitated and integrated back in their communities after serving their terms.

I was taken into a segment of the prison area where juveniles are kept. I was told that most of them have been convicted for crimes ranging from petty theft to more serious cases of robbery, physical assault, rape and murder. Some of them are yet to appear in court and are still waiting for their trial.

Remember these are young people caught by the criminal justice system. These young people would have been in school now, but why and how they end up in this prison has its own story. However, in a town where there are so many thousands of young people who are dropping out from the formal school system each year, criminal activities seem to be the only option for them.

It is not even surprising to see that many young people are in the Buimo prison. In Papua New Guinea, it is often claimed that many of the crimes committed are perpetrated by young people between the ages of 12 and 18. In fact, after 34 years of independence, law and order problems committed by young people remain one of the single most important issues on the agenda of public debate in Papua New Guinea. It appears that young people in the country will continue to be in conflict with the law so long as youths are not presented with opportunities to be integrated well into the community.