• Juvenile justice

Juvenile justice

This paper examines how well current legislation and practice in Georgia is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Minimum Standards and Norms of Juvenile Justice and current notions of good practice. It finds a number of shortfalls and too little emphasis on prevention and diversion from the criminal justice system.

Key findings include:

• Georgia does not have juvenile courts or juvenile judges, indeed no specific juvenile criminal procedure exists for children who appear before the court
• whilst  the Criminal Code provides the judge with a range of possible non-custodial sanctions when sentencing, in practice, the options are few, and there are an inadequate range of alternatives to detention
• the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, which would result in a reduction of the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 are a cause of considerable concern in the light of the failure to implement Convention provisions

The author recommends that:

• the juvenile justice system for children over the age of 14 should be reformed to ensure compliance with the UN Convention and Minimum Standards and Norms
• in order to bring about the necessary reform, a new Juvenile Justice Law or Code should be drafted and implemented
• the Ministry of interior should establish special units within the police for dealing with juvenile offenders as well as juvenile victims and witnesses in accordance with UN Guidelines
•  such units should also be responsible for developing policy on prevention and working with other stakeholders to deliver prevention programmes
  

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend