Daily Times

A juvenile prisoner at the Peshawar Central Prison recently reported that he and other juvenile inmates had been sexually abused inside the jail and that certain prison officials ‘supply’ them to adult prisoners. The boy alleged that the prison officials had randomly been taking out juvenile inmates and presenting them to different prisoners for sex in return for monitory considerations. This matter has gone unreported because other juvenile inmates were afraid of torture by prison officials as well as adult prisoners. This scandal shines a light on the victimisation of juvenile prisoners by prison staff and is the example of an issue plaguing juvenile facilities nationwide.

The predatory authority figures in prisons overpower the trust of the young target by first cultivating a fear and then wrapping it up coldly with a false sense of security offering protection. And then the sex ensues, sometimes forced, sometimes seemingly consensual. It is a classic predatory tactic and no one familiar with it could have been terribly surprised when this report from a juvenile prisoner at the Peshawar Central Prison declared that young people in the country’s juvenile detention facilities are being victimised in just this way. The youngsters in custody are often deeply troubled, lacking parents, looking for allies. And the people in charge of the facilities wield great power over the day-to-day lives of their charges.

When you have an extreme power differential and absolute unchecked power, bad things start happening. This position is ridiculous. The power dynamics between a prisoner and prison staff are hugely skewed. When you combine this with a culture where sex abuse by males on males is called bacha baazi (abuse of children) and is not taken seriously, then you have the perfect set-up for predatory men with all this power to get away with it. The power imbalance between prison staff and juvenile inmates creates a setting where young prisoners are easily coerced into sex with promises of special treatment or threats of discipline and the prison regulatory systems are ill-equipped to identify or treat the problem. When law enforcement views young offenders as perpetrators, and when their cases are not dismissed or diverted but sent deeper into the justice system, the cost is twofold: young, vulnerable offenders get easily preyed upon by predators and abusers in prisons who are shielded from accountability, and the unaddressed trauma faced by the young victims becomes the underlying cause of their sexually offending behaviour when released from prison.

A troubled juvenile justice system presents an array of challenges for those concerned about better protecting young people in custody. The provincial government must establish borstal institutions under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Borstal Institution Act, 2012. Punishing predators and abusers to deter such acts and making a lesson for others is crucial. Sadly, sometimes the young male victims themselves may not even consider their relationships with men to constitute sexual abuse. They might consider it consensual because they did not actively fight off their abusers. Vulnerable young inmates require understanding that this is, in fact, a crime, that it is never really consensual and that its long-term effects can be seriously harmful for the victims. Punishment for prison officials to stop blaming the young boys and meaningfully punish the guilty men, establishing standards of conduct meant to end the abuse is the minimum the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government should be able to demonstrate.

The biggest concern is that many have experienced trauma their entire lives and now this is just more trauma for them to deal with, which means lack of trust in relationships with adults and with authority figures. They have been betrayed; they do not know what positive relationships should be like and, for many, they have never had them their entire lives. There is no such thing as safe harbour in custody or in prisons. These young offenders are getting the kind of treatment and sentencing that will make them even more dangerous, damaged and vengeful than before. When you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, responsibility, ethics and morality are expected but the reality of it is that some of the officers in prison are very persuasive and some of the adult prisoners are even more persuasive and resourceful.

According to official data, there are around 105 juvenile prisoners in the Peshawar Central Prison. Among them are 95 under trials and 10 convicts. There are around 338 juvenile prisoners in all the prisons and judicial lock-ups in the province, including 311 under trial juveniles and 27 convicted. It would be difficult to guess if anybody has gotten a real handle on why we are finding these kinds of atrocities happening to juvenile prisoners and when these abusers will be identified, halted and prosecuted in Khyber Pakhtunhwa, but one thing is for sure: the PTI chairman, Imran Khan, is more focused on finding errors in the electoral system than advising his team to keep the issues that matter to a lot of people on the radar screen.

Whatever kind of threat you choose, be it rape, assault by institutional staff or suicide, prison is a more dangerous place for young offenders. But the frightening character of these statistics raises a larger issue in terms of how effective the government will be from a crime control perspective. Victims of rape or sexual assault are more likely to exhibit aggression towards women and children, and the social costs of imprisoning young offenders near adult facilities may be paid in crimes and violence perpetrated upon their release.

It is agreed that most of the juveniles in our prisons are not good people. But we do not sentence them to violence, brutality and inhumanity. To do that would be to disavow our own human decency. If the laws can prevent one child from being asexually abused, they are worth the legislative and bureaucratic effort. However, sadly, the laws do not have much effect. If child abusers, most of whom are prison officials and adult prisoners, could be prevented from their crimes by concern over legal consequences, the laws now on the books would suffice. Child abusers do not generally plan their crimes and child abuse does not happen in isolation. Most often, it is chronic criminal behaviour engaged in by people who have been abused themselves. Whatever form sexual assaults take in juvenile facilities, they should not be tolerated or downplayed. Those who do commit these crimes need to be punished. The laws are already in place. They only need to be enforced with the same vigilance that sent these children to prison in the first place.

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com