Hope in Minister Hanna’s promises
We greet with cautious optimism the Government’s announced measures to deal with the serious issue of children placed in adult prisons.
The Administration should know that we will monitor their actions on this matter and will hold them to the many promises they made and publicised on Monday this week.
Ms Lisa Hanna, the youth and culture minister, joined by her Cabinet colleagues — National Security Minister Peter Bunting and Justice Minister Mark Golding — told the country that a recommendation is to be placed before the Executive to change the law giving judges the power to commit children with behavioural problems to prison.
“The recommendation is that the State should end the institutionalisation of children in correctional facilities for so-called uncontrollable behaviour,” Minster Hanna said.
To achieve that, she said, systems and facilities are to be established for therapeutic treatment of these children.
The ministers also told us that $75 million has been secured through the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme to build and refurbish facilities at five police stations, where children in conflict with the law can be accommodated for processing separate from adult remandees. Eventually, the State intends to have 14 such facilities in 12 parishes.
In addition, the Office of the Children’s Advocate, the Child Development Agency (CDA), and the Department of Correctional Services will have at their service a pool of child care specialists, among them psychiatrists and/or psychologists, and behaviour management experts.
Plus, a liaison officer is to be assigned to each police station to ensure that the Office of the Children’s Advocate and the CDA are notified the moment a child is remanded at a police station.
We welcome Minister Hanna’s revelation that children who are regarded as being in need of care and protection have been removed from the six remand and correctional centres across the island. For, we hold the view that to have put children in those facilities in the first place was cruel and callous.
The Government has certainly taken its own sweet time to address the injustice meted out to these children, and has been rightly criticised for its general inaction. However, we see in the current plans, hope for a better future for children who run afoul of the law or who are deemed by their parents to be uncontrollable.
But even as the Government moves to start treating these children as human beings, we must point out that parents have an even greater role to play in the lives of their children.
People simply cannot decide to have children and pass them on to the State to be raised. That is irresponsibility at its highest.