The justice system is failing children because an important Bill that will protect the rights of children has virtually disappeared since 2003.
This emerged on Wednesday at the Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in South Africa (Reclisa) conference in Boksburg.
”The Child Justice Bill was the product of four years of work by the South Africa Law Reform Commission,” said Jacqui Gallinetti of the University of the Western Cape.
”In 2002 it was introduced to Parliament, in 2003 the portfolio committee on justice and constitutional development held public hearings … in 2004 Parliament recessed for the elections and since that time, the Bill has not been debated again …”
This Bill, Gallinetti said, will provide a standardised way of dealing with children who committed crime.
”Currently it is a hit-and-miss affair.”
Gallinetti said research into children being used by adults to commit crimes was only recently conducted in South Africa.
The concept was identified about 20 years ago in South America, where children had been used by adults in the drug trade.
The researcher in the South African study that was done last year, Cheryl Frank, said 541 children were studied. Of these, 420 were awaiting trial at secure care centres and 121 were high school pupils in Gauteng and the Western Cape. The average age of the children was 16.
Frank said 30% of the total group of children said they had committed crimes to obtain money. Of the group of children in the secure care centres, 46,7% said they were accused with adults.
The children indicated that adults used several methods to coerce them into committing crime. Bribing the children or offering them rewards was the most common.
”Adults say that you must go and steal, and they will give you money and drugs,” one child said.
Drugs played a role in getting the children involved in crime.
Violence or the threat of violence was also mentioned by children as a method adults used to get them involved in crime.
”They have guns and they are gangsters and they force you to do things.”
Gallinetti said there was a general understanding that children accused of crimes were entitled to certain rights and procedural guarantees. Children who were used by adults to commit crimes needed more protection and special procedures.
”They must still be held accountable, but they must be diverted from the usual criminal-justice procedures and they must be helped to get away from the adults using them.”
She said children mostly committed economic crimes.
”Not many commit serious crimes, like murder and rape.”
A pilot programme was launched in April in Mitchells Plain in Cape Town and Mamelodi in Pretoria to identify children used by adults to commit crime and to properly assist them.
She said an attempt is being made to integrate new systems with existing procedures. Probation officers who interview children are being trained to find out if children arrested have been used by an adult to commit the crime. Such a child is then diverted so that he can be treated as a victim while also being held accountable.
Joan van Niekerk of Childline said the country was failing children.
”Officials are out of touch with what really happens to children,” she said.
She said justice officials often denied that children in their regions were being used by adults to commit crimes.
”They should be trained. It must become routine to identify such children.”
She said the reasons for children committing crime should be investigated better.
Many children become involved in crime at the age of 15 — a year after child-care grants stop.
Gallinetti said although the use of children by adults to commit crimes is well on its way to being recognised at national level, it must be remembered that child justice in South Africa is still a developing field.
She said for the phenomenon to be dealt with as one of the worst forms of child labour and a child justice issue, ”there needs to be a co-operation beyond that which is specific to the criminal justice system.”
According to a regional report by Reclisa, almost 50-million children between the ages of five and 14 in sub-Saharan Africa worked.
Africa is the only region in the world where exploitative child labour has not decreased in the past four years.
”This scourge robs children of their childhood, including their important right to an education, while exposing them to abuse and hazards.”
The conference ends on Thursday. — Sapa