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Getting Justice For Juveniles
posted (September 26, 2014)
For the past two days, there have been no regular Supreme Court or Magistrate's Court hearings. That's because all the judges and magistrates were in San Ignacio attending a conference to dialog with the National Committee for Families and Children, and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The discussion is about how to improve the juvenile Justice System to reduce the impact of child trauma of juveniles whose lives are affected by the justice system.

Today, we went to the Cahal Pech Resort and where we spoke with the main facilitators about the practical outcomes from this session:

Luwani Cayetano - Executive Director, NCFC
"This activity is kind of part of a larger group of activities and partnership that we have and so NCFC, UNICEF and the Supreme Court have kind of come together to do some institutional and legal reform and so a part of that is yes there will be buildings and yes there will be new spaces, but we also then have to provide capacity to the people doing the work and so then providing training about understanding, about how to treat children in court, how to ensure their best interest is really a big part of that - the component of that reform. The information that the judiciary already have is a refresher so that when we have these new spaces, we have new court rooms and we have child friendly spaces in court they will then be able to use that knowledge and the spaces and hopefully then we will have better protection for children who come in conflict with the law, but who are also victims of violence or abuse and exploitation."

Daniel Ortiz
"How do you balance that matter of enforcement against repeat offenders who are juveniles and trying to protect their rights at the same time?"

Hazel Thompson Ahye - Family/Juvenile Law Specialist
"One of the things emphasize is that even though you are a repeat offender, you are still entitle to all your rights. What needs to happen is that there should be no discrimination because somebody is a repeat offender. A repeat offender many times, being a repeat offender points to the fact that there is something going on with that child. This is one of the things we will be looking at this afternoon; we need to have a correct assessment, screening, to find out what is the root cause because may times if you don't deal with that it's going to keep on happening and that the last session I deal with them - just now was restorative justice, where we have the reintegration of the offend in the community. So we have a different way of looking and the offence. Not a crime against the state, but in fact a crime has been committed against a victim and the community and how do you restore, how to you repay the wrong that has happen, so it's a different way of looking at things and it is very suitable in terms of what you do with juveniles because you need to make them think, reflect of their actions and that's another reason you must have justice expeditiously."

Next week Tuesday and Wednesday, there will be a second conference in which these 3 groups will discuss amendments to the juvenile justice legislation to enable rehabilitation of young people, and increase influence of social workers. The discussion should also include the topic of building child-friendly Family Courts in 2 districts and creating child-friendly court spaces in every district.

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