Juvenile offenders are victims of vulnerable families – experts

The judicial reform in the field of juvenile justice, of the last summer, has resulted, according to the first estimations, in a 30% reduction in the number of offences committed by minors, as well as in the modification of the applied sanctions. This statement was made on Wednesday, February 21, during a news conference by the representatives of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ), General Prosecutor’s Office (GPO), Penitentiary Institutions Department, Institute for Penal Reforms (IPR) and UNICEF-Moldova, Info-Prim Neo reports. As vice chair of SCJ Raisa Botezatu states, the reform has established that the maximum jail term for children be reduced from 15 to 12.5 years, while the holding term – from 72 to 24 hours. At the same time, the juvenile offenders can be arrested preventively for a term that does not exceed four months, except only for the serious offences, while the punishment is applied if the educative measures do not have a positive result. Another provision that facilitates the situation of children in conflict with the law is the possibility to reconcile with the hurt person, even in cases of serious offences, which stipulates the maximum punishment. In addition, the prosecuting agencies are obliged to abolish criminal proceedings if the parties have reconciled. Raisa Botezatu says that due to the reform, 600 minors were not imprisoned in penitentiaries, but are put on probation, while 320 have been sentenced to work for community service. At the same time, the retroactivity of the law allowed the minors sentenced to many years to serve their sentence for a shorter period, while the investigation will be carried out by the prosecutors and not by policemen, which is much better for the children, Raisa Botezatu said. Head of minors’ protection Division of the GPO, Eugen Rusu, asserts that most of juvenile delinquents are victims of the troubles in families, disregard of parents that leave their children without supervision or abandon them for many years while they are abroad. Nowadays, 35,000 children in Moldova live without both parents, while 75,000 – with one of the parents. According to the cited source, the GPO’s task is not to fight against children, but against cases that provoke the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency. The possibility of creating the Prosecutor’s Office and Court for minors will be considered in the near future. IPR director Igor Dolea asserts that it is needed to create a Court that would analyse the juvenile delinquency from all the points of view of the family – conditions in which the child is educated, divorce of parents, property partition etc. Concurrently, the cited source says that in these courts there must be reintroduced the institute of assessors among teachers, psychiatrists. “Children must go to school, not to prisons. The legislative amendments are in favour of children, so these initiatives must be continued”, UNICEF Representative to Moldova, Ray Virgilio said. As Virgilio states, 86% of the offences committed by minors are against property and has an economic character. “Poverty has a special impact on children’ security, while their fate would be better if the underprivileged families benefited from financial and material support”, Virgilio added. In 2006, minors committed 4 murders, 10 cases of serious bodily injuries, 20 rapes, 111 plunders, 18 acts of robbery, 1336 thefts and 56 acts of hooliganism.