By: Abramson B
Produced by: International Juvenile Justice Observatory (OIJJ) 2004
This paper focuses on how reformers, in particular juvenile justice professionals or children's rights activists, can make better use of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to implement the law for youth who are in trouble with the law.
The paper defines and discusses the importance of diversion (where a young offender is diverted from imprisonment); the juvenile justice system; and the CRC. It also focuses on how juvenile justice specialists can help realise the potential of the CRC; and argues for the right to a properly functioning diversion system.
The paper highlights a number of issues which are important in viewing the juvenile justice work as political activity: the juvenile justice system is an inter-connected system of governmental bureaucracies that have competing perspectives and interests, not the least of which is conflicts over budgets; there is failure in communication - advocacy that refuses to acknowledge the State's right and duty to protect the public and a bewildering vocabulary; and the use of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other UN agreements as tools for advocacy.
The paper makes three suggestions of how juvenile justice specialists can put the Convention on the Rights of the Child to better use as a tool for penal reform:
- Use the international mechanisms, such as participating in the reporting process. The primary mechanism in the CRC is the reporting system, which is made of up the state implementation reports submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the dialogues over the reports between the Committee and each State, and the Committee's ensuing recommendations
- Networking and coalition building at the local, national, and international levels
- Making the case to international lenders and donors that penal reform is essential to a society's development.
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