Daily Times

Juvenile Justice Systems Ordinance (JJSO) was introduced by General Musharraf in 2000. All provincial governments and Islamabad Capital Territory had notified JJSO by 2002. In 2003, AJ&K Assembly passed the Juvenile Justice System Act. JJSO was extended to FATA (now merged with KPK) and FANA in 2004. It entails separate custodial arrangements for children, right to counsel, timely processing of their cases, and liberal use of alternative sentencing measures, such as release on probation.

Salient features of JJSO:

JJSO provides that a child is a person, who at the time of the commission of an offence, is below the age of 18 years.

It says that the delinquent has the right to legal assistance at the expense of the state. It requires every provincial government to establish juvenile courts. JJSO prohibits joint trial of a child and adult accused of an offence together.

It restricts the attendance of a person other than guardians, who should be immediately informed of the child’s arrest. It restricts the media to disclose the identity of the child.

The basic idea of the juvenile court is reformative where the state acts as a guardian when the parents are found unfit, incapable or unwilling to do the needful. Emphasis is not on the act done by the child, but the inducing circumstances. The juvenile offender is treated not as a criminal but as a ward of the state, who receives care, custody and protection given to a neglected or dependent child. Currently, at least 90 per cent of children in detention are under-trial prisoner. In many cases, their trials are yet to begin or have been going on for a very long time.

The concept of Reformatory Schools, Certified Schools, and Borstal Institution has not been realised despite the presence of laws relating to them. In Pakistan, there are only six facilities exclusively for juveniles: Youthful Offenders Industrial Schools in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Larkana, and Borstal Institutions and Juvenile Jails in Faisalabad and Bahawalpur. These facilities are for male juveniles only. Female juvenile offenders are kept with adult women prisoners and there is no provision in any prison in Pakistan to keep them separate.

The Borstal institutes and juvenile jails of Faisalabad and Bahawalpur operate under the Punjab Borstal Act 1926. Living conditions for young offenders such as separate sleeping accommodation, proper water supply, clothing, food and sanitary arrangements, suitable education and industrial training are all outlined under the Punjab Borstal Rules, 1932.

The Borstal jail, which was constructed in 2002 in Bahawalpur is the largest children’s correctional facility of the country.

The provincial government is bound by the law to appoint psychologists at prisons or borstal institutions, where juvenile offenders are kept. Yet, detention centres all over Pakistan lack this facility.

Health, education, recreation, drinking water and sanitation facilities remain poor at all borstal institutions.

The basic idea of the juvenile court is reformative where the state acts as a guardian when the parents are found unfit, incapable or unwilling to do the needful

There is no doctor available for the inmates. Only a medical practitioner from the central prison occasionally visits the school.

There is a hot debate between the Prison Department and Human Rights Activists, regarding the control of Borstals.

The prison department wants to keep the Borstals under its control, while activists believe that they should have staff specially trained in handling juvenile offenders with care, understanding and kindness, not as hardened criminals.

Critical Issues in Juvenile Justice System

As far as leading issues in the juvenile justice system in Pakistan are concerned, these are:

Age of criminal responsibility: The minimum age for criminal responsibility should be raised to better respond to international standards. Article 4.1 of the Beijing Rules states that “In those legal systems recognizing the concept of the age of criminal responsibility for juveniles, the beginning of that age shall not be fixed at too low an age level, bearing in mind the facts of emotional, mental and intellectual maturity.”

Police Custody And Pre-Trial Detention: According to Article 10(3), in case the child has criminal guardians, he will be under the custody of a Probation Officer but certainly not in a police station or jail. Earlier in its report in 2007, Amnesty International reported, “The number of juvenile courts remained inadequate. Children continued to be tried and detained along with adults. Children were detained under the collective responsibility clause of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in the tribal areas for offences committed by others, a clear violation of the prohibition in international law of collective punishment.”

Separation of Adults and Minors: The situation about the condition of detention of juvenile offenders in Pakistan is abysmal. Children are housed together with adult prisoners. There are several incidences of juveniles being subjected to torture, sexual abuses and harassment by adult prisoners. JJSO postulates the creation of remand homes, industrial schools borstal institutions. Extortion and narcotics trafficking by lower-level staff took place in Karachi institutions, and solitary confinement and shackles were used as punitive measures in Bahawalpur.

Recommendations

Borstal institutes should be established in all provinces to house juvenile delinquents. Arrest, detention and imprisonment of a child should be avoided and used as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate time. JJSO should ban life imprisonment to rehabilitate and reintegrate juveniles. The Departments of Reclamation and Probation must be strengthened and the Provincial Governments, in consultation with the respective High Courts, should send clear guidelines about the role of probation officers in deciding the cases of juvenile offenders to the police, prosecution services, district and lower judiciary. The staff for borstals, other correctional facilities and juvenile wards should be recruited separately and they should not be transferred to other adult prisons. Prison staff posted at such facilities must be specially trained to deal with children. In particular, they should be sensitised to the kind of language to be used that aligns with the children’s right to dignity.

Training is a continuous effort. Training and performance evaluation should go hand in hand with career planning. A National Committee with membership from public academia, health sector, NGOs and public representatives needs to be constituted and mandated to suggest career planning of prison officials and delegation of power to them.

The writer is associated with the Public Policy Think Tank Institute