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.”
Chairperson of the United Nations committee on the 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. — Sapa