Barry Streek The draft Child Justice Bill will prohibit life imprisonment sentences for children who commit offences while under the age of 18 and compel the high court to review all jail sentences of children. Central to the proposal is that every effort should be made to keep children under the age of 18 out of jail, and imprisonment should be the last option. The Bill has been drafted in terms of the provisions of the Constitution, the requirements of international law precepts and South Africa’s obligations in terms of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. The draft Bill was handed this week to Minister of Justice Penuel Maduna by the South African Law Commission after his predecessor, Dullah Omar, appointed a project committee to draft proposals for a juvenile justice system in 1996. The leader of the project committee, Anne Skelton, said in the case of minor offences, children could be diverted from the criminal justice system and pay their debts to society without being labelled criminals or ending up with criminal records. Sentences for juvenile offenders could include supervision under a probation officer, the mandatory attending of certain services and community service. There would be children for which there would be no other option than a residential sentence but they should go to appropriate facilities: “The last resort should be incarceration – for very serious and violent offences,” Skelton said. The draft Bill raises the minimum age of criminal liability from seven to 10 years. It incorporates a statutory requirement that social inquiry reports be made available at the pre- sentence stage in all except minor cases. It includes a compulsory provision of legal representation for all children who are remanded awaiting trial in detention, who are expected to face trial in a court where the likelihood exists that a residential sentence may be imposed upon conviction, or who, by virtue of being aged between 10 and 14, are presumed to lack criminal activity but are being tried in court pursuant to the issuing of a certificate of prosecution. The Bill also incorporates provisions compelling a high court review of any sentence with a residential element imposed upon a child, or any sentence involving correctional supervision, irrespective of the status of the sentencing officer, his or her length of service, suspension of the sentence in whole or part, or the fact that the child was legally represented at the trial. The bill overrides the prescribed sentencing provisions of the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act in regard to children under the age of 18.