Child justice laws still coming

Amid widespread outcry about the treatment of girls at the country’s main juvenile detention facility, Government’s chief legal advisor has revealed that in three months, critical ‘child justice’ laws could be headed to Parliament.

Attorney General Dale Marshall, who served as Home Affairs Minister under a previous administration said the laws would not be fast-tracked to satisfy public outcry.

Speaking on the Down to Brass-Tacks radio call-in programme, he explained that in an effort to “get it right”, there have been numerous delays in the legislative drafting process.

Reports of a shocking image of a naked 14-year-old girl on the ground in solitary confinement has sparked a national conversation about the country’s juvenile justice system. In addition to calls to close the Barrow’s St. Lucy facility, activists are calling for a total re-examination of the system that imposes penalties for offences such as wandering.

Marshall declared that “juvenile justice reform” has been on the current government’s agenda from day one.

“Yes, there’s been a delay from the point of view that we haven’t done it yet, but the purpose of the delay has been to try to get it right and by trying to get it right it means that we have to rethink how we want interventions,” Marshall contended.

“I think that the next step is to get the legislation before Parliament in the shortest possible time, but it is not to satisfy any public outcry. It is that we are continuing those meetings and we feel that we are almost there in terms of our legislation and hopefully we will get it into Parliament within the next three months.

“I want to put arrangements in place where we can have lawfully binding interventions. So it is not the kind of thing that we can throw out and we have learnt especially in relation to child justice that adopting something that a Caribbean brother or sister country has, is not going to be our solution,” the Attorney General added.

Despite the calls for immediate action, the AG added that it would take considerable time and effort to reverse the laws that have been languishing on the books for almost a century. In fact, he explained that a bill was drafted based on existing legislation in another jurisdiction, but was deemed unsatisfactory because it did not cater to “our particular circumstances”.

“What we have been doing all these years in the last administration, in our administration before that and all the other administrations before, we were dealing with children on the basis of victorian concepts. We have a statute on our books called the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act which dates back to 1924. When you look at the Child Care Board Act and its rules in relation to adoption, they are all archaic. So just about everything in relation to the issue of child justice must be reformed and that reform I commit to you and I commit to the public, is currently on the way,” Marshall promised.

Government has also been heavily criticised for maintaining laws and practices that contravene the country’s international treaty obligations. The AG argued that according to rulings handed down from the country’s highest court, such treaties are enforceable in court.

“The Caribbean Court of Justice has said that as long as you have signed onto a treaty, the people who are intended to be the beneficiaries of that treaty have a legitimate expectation, which is enforceable as to how we will proceed as a state. So even though we may not have incorporated the treaty into the domestic law, as long as we’ve signed onto it, there is judicial authority from our highest court that says we are still bound by it,” he explained.
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)