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SOUTH AFRICA
New laws for child offenders needed
The South African justice system needs new legislation
to improve how it deals with young offenders, government advocates and
United Nations representatives said on Tuesday.
Children had the right
to be treated as children no matter how vile their actions,
Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Mokgoro told a conference on child
justice in Pretoria. "It's important that the expression of every aspect
of children's rights takes into account children's needs."
Chairman of the United nations committee on Rights of
Children, Professor Jaap Doek said not all children could be put into
the same basket. Doek said child justice measures needed to distinguish
between children's petty offences and the more serious and violent
crimes. "It becomes much harder for a child offender to be brought back
into society if that child has a criminal record." Instead the state had
to treat root causes of juvenile delinquency and standardise policies
like life skills programmes and education to deal with child offenders
in an efficient and appropriate way.
The objective in the end was to limit the number of
children prosecuted and sentenced in court.
Raesebi Tladi of the
Department of Justice told delegates that rehabilitation centres were
piloting new procedures to ensure a holistic approach to helping
children charged with crimes. "The clear objective will be
re-integrating the child into society."
Delegates agreed that it was
critical to involve society as a whole in protecting children's rights
and combating crime
1 August 2006
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=qw1154442780625B224
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