Plea for keeping children out of prison

Govern­ment urged to make alloca­tions for the juveni­le justic­e system.

KARACHI: Even after 11 years of its promulgation, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance has yet to be implemented at the trial court level.

On Saturday, a seminar titled ‘State of Probation and Juvenile Justice in Sindh’, to review the situation was organised by the Sindh Judicial Academy, the Sindh home department and the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc).

The seminar started with a welcome address from Sparc Executive Director Arshad Mahmood. He said that the ordinance guarantees the right of legal assistance at the state’s expense for every child, who is either accused or the victim of an offence.

“It is regrettable that very few children have been provided legal assistance at the state’s expense because there is no budget,” he said.

Mahmood urged the Sindh government to appoint probation officers in each district. “This step will help reduce the number of juvenile prisoners, which is currently 300,” he added. He requested the event’s chief guest, Sindh High Court Chief Justice Mushir Alam, to direct the government to assign funds for this purpose.

“Juvenile courts in Sukkur, Hyderabad and Karachi should also be taken into consideration,” said Mahmood. He explained that judges at the trial court level cannot attend the children’s cases according to the procedure prescribed in the ordinance, due to the burden of cases on the judiciary.

The law permits first-time offenders to be released for one to three years on probation or parole, giving them an opportunity to be rehabilitated under the supervision of a probation officer. “The Sindh Judicial Academy (SJA) will provide training to the probation and parole officers, in order to equip them to play an effective role in the criminal justice system for children,” said the SJA director general, Justice (retired) Saleem Akhtar.

In his opinion, only effective implementation of the juvenile ordinance and other related laws could reduce the number of children in prisons.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2011.