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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:57 pm
Time: 10:57 pm
Results for rights of children
4 results foundAuthor: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Title: Children and Adolescents in the United States' Adult Criminal Justice System Summary: 1. As a result of its visits and of the information it received, the IACHR observes that a significant number of children are being consistently treated as adults in the U.S. criminal justice system, in violation of their basic right to special protection and to be tried in a specialized juvenile system1. This issue is the main focus of this report. The IACHR has also observed that this phenomenon of child criminal defendants being treated as adults is part of a broader nationwide pattern in the United States of failure to protect and promote the rights of children, and failure to uniformly define "child" under the law in order to protect the fundamental human rights persons under the age of 18. 2. The United States has played an important role in promoting and establishing a specialized approach to youth within the criminal justice system, with the aim of rehabilitating, rather than simply punishing, youth who are convicted of a crime. The world's first juvenile court division was created in the U.S. state of Illinois in 1899, and within 25 years all but two of the states had followed suit and established similar juvenile court systems. However, the Commission notes with grave concern that in the 1980s, this began to change. By the year 1990, many states across the U.S. had passed highly regressive changes to their legislation and policy with regard to youth involved in the justice system. The changes varied in the details of their implementation, but the broad theme was the denial of access to rehabilitative juvenile justice systems, and consequent mandatory processing of juveniles in the more punitive adult systems. 3. The Commission notes with grave concern that according to the information it received, as a result of state laws requiring or allowing youth in conflict with the law to be tried as adults, an estimated 200,000 children and adolescents in conflict with the law are tried in adult criminal courts each year in the United States. The IACHR is aware that the majority of U.S. states still have laws, policies, and practices in place that enable them to incarcerate children in adult facilities. The Commission is also gravely concerned about the lack of data available regarding children in contact with the adult criminal system. 4. According to information received by the Commission, there are three main ways in which children and adolescents enter the adult criminal justice system in the United States, based on the particular legislation of each state. First, by way of laws that grant jurisdiction to the adult criminal courts for persons under 18 years of age. Second, through laws that allow for a child's case to be transferred from the juvenile system to the adult system. Third, as a result of hybrid sentencing laws that operate between the jurisdictions of the adult and juvenile systems, as well as other provisions with similar effect, such as "once an adult, always an adult" laws. 5. According to the information received by the Commission, the rights of children and adolescents who are charged with committing crimes in the U.S. are not duly protected at each stage of the proceedings, which in turn, has further negative consequences for those who are transferred and sentenced in the adult system. In particular, the IACHR has received information regarding: the absence of quality legal counsel; the possibility that youth can waive their right to legal representation; the fact that youth undergo long periods of time awaiting the disposition of their cases; and the possibility that many youth end up in the adult system as a result of plea agreements, without fully comprehending the consequences of such agreements. 6. In light of the information it received and examined, the IACHR finds that under the current state of the law in the U.S. related to children in contact with the criminal justice system, certain laws, policies, and practices have a disproportionate and discriminatory impact on certain groups, resulting in the over-representation of members of such groups in the criminal justice system. This is the case for children who are tried in the adult criminal justice system and confined in adult detention facilities. According to information received by the Commission, these disparities increase with each step further into the criminal justice system, beginning with arrest and referral to the juvenile system, through transfer to adult courts, to sentencing and confinement in adult correctional facilities. 7. States are not legally required to separate youth from adults in adult facilities. While the federal law for juvenile justice, i.e., the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) as reauthorized in 2002, does establish the separation of youth from adults as one of its core custody-related requirements, its provisions do not apply to children and adolescents in the adult system. This has very detrimental and grave impacts on children and adolescents, among them, according to information reported by several large jails and prisons systems, more than 10% of the children housed there are subjected to solitary confinement, while smaller facilities have reported that 100% of the children they hold are in isolation. Furthermore, no federal or state legislation in the United States prohibits solitary confinement of youth held in adult facilities; only a few states expressly refer to the use of isolation in their statutes. 8. Multiple studies in the United States have shown that adult jails and prisons are detrimental for children, as these facilities are designed for adults and are not equipped to keep children safe from the elevated risks of abuse and harm that they face inside them. Some of these include: youth are five times more likely to suffer sexual abuse or rape in an adult facility as compared to those held in juvenile facilities. Youth incarcerated in adult facilities are also twice as likely to be physically abused by correctional staff, have a 50% higher chance of being attacked with a weapon, and have a high probability of witnessing or being the target of violence committed by other prisoners. 9. This report will examine the situations in which U.S. law fails to protect the rights of children in the criminal justice system. In this context, the IACHR will analyze provisions in U.S. legislation that apply to children, in light of the State's international obligations to protect and guarantee the human rights of children and adolescents before the criminal law, particularly the right to be treated as children. Details: Washington, DC: The Commission, 2018. 146p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 20, 2018 at: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/Children-USA.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/Children-USA.pdf Shelf Number: 153513 Keywords: Juvenile Court TransfersJuvenile Justice PolicyJuvenile OffendersJuvenile SentencingRights of ChildrenWaiver (of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction)Young Adult Offenders |
Author: Galdeano, Ana Paula Title: Brasil - Niņos y niņas con madres y padres encarcelados por delitos de drogas menores no violentos (Brazil - Children with mothers and fathers imprisoned for non-violent minor drug offenses) Summary: This article addresses the specific situation of children and adolescents (NNA) with adult referents imprisoned for drug offenses in Brazil. The study of this problem is a challenging task due to the absence of official and academic information on how many They are and how these children live. In Brazil we found few studies on children with imprisoned parents (NNAPES, from here onwards) However, literature on the subject has increased in recent years (Braga and Angotti, 2015; Galdeano et al., 2018). In this sense, the bibliographical research of Ormenõ, Maia and Willians (2013) indicates that the Brazilian production on the subject is still small in comparison with the North American one; proof of this is that they only identified five scientific articles on the subject in question. In general, these works resort to theoretical references of psychology and seek to understand the impacts of incarceration on the affective dimension of the sons and daughters of people deprived of their freedom. In North America it has been identified that the impacts of incarceration imply issues such as social stigma, traumas derived from having witnessed the arrest of parents, regressive and antisocial behavior, early involvement in crime, feelings of anxiety, guilt, loneliness and abandonment, low self-esteem, various disorders in feeding, sleep and attention, among others (Cunningham and Baker, 2003; Johnston, 1995; apud Ormenõ, Maya and Willians, 2013). It should be noted that the English-language works are focused, above all, in the children of imprisoned women. In addition, in Latin America some studies have been carried out to know the reality of the NNAPES, which includes various recommendations in this regard. An important contribution to the debate is found in the research coordinated by Church World Service and Gurises Unidos (2013) on the social, economic and affective impacts of this problematic in the region. Inspired by this initiative, in Brazil we conducted an investigation - supported by the Articulation of Movements of the Rights of Children and Adolescents- in the 36 children and adolescents participated with relatives deprived of their liberty for different crimes (Galdeano et al., 2018). Because it is not a representative sample, the results obtained are not generalizable to the total population of NNAPES. However, our findings indicate that the family and community life in poor territories is strongly crossed by the Imprisonment phenomenon. Especially, we find that the reality of prisons precedes the moment of incarceration, since among the children interviewed, seven (19.4%) witnessed the detention of their relatives, six (16.6%) observed beatings by the police and one witnessed the exchange of gunfire. These situations clearly reveal the forms of frightening, humiliating and shameful treatment that children receive from the State during the detention of their relatives, all of which contravenes the provisions of the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent (Brazil, 1990: Article 18). Likewise, we observe that the imprisonment of adolescents and adults is an experience common among neighbors, friends and acquaintances of the children interviewed (14 of them (38.8%) reported having adolescent friends deprived of freedom in the socio-educational system). Details: Church World Service, 2018. 45p. Source: Internet Resource; Accessed May 16, 2019 at: http://www.cwslac.org/nnapes-pdd/en Year: 2019 Country: Brazil URL: Shelf Number: 155870 Keywords: Children of InmatesFamilies of PrisonersRights of Children |
Author: Torres Quintero, Astrid Title: Colombia - Ninos y ninas con madres y padres encarcelados por delitos de drogas menores no violentos ( 103/5000 Colombia - Children with mothers and fathers imprisoned for minor non-violent drug offenses) Summary: In Colombia, there are currently 115,862 people deprived of their liberty, despite the fact that The capacity of the institutions of confinement is for 79,211 (INPEC, 2018). This situation of overcrowding generates multiple violations of human rights, recognized by the Court Constitutional, that declared an "unconstitutional state of affairs" in prison matters, is say, a serious and massive situation of violation of rights for the private population of the freedom, derived from multiple factors and that, for its improvement, requires actions of all the competent institutions (Constitutional Court of Colombia, 2013 and 2015). However, the recognition of the serious situation suffered by people who are in seclusion does not imply the visibility of other subjects who suffer the impacts of imprisonment, as are families and, especially, children and adolescents (NNA, from now on) whose parents are deprived of freedom, for which reason they are out of focus of attention for making decisions both in terms of prison policy, and in the field of policies aimed at protecting the rights of children and adolescents. In the case of non-violent drug-related crimes, despite the fact that there has been debate over the impact of criminal treatment mainly on the people who carry out the traffic and sale of psychoactive substances, because of the vulnerability that characterizes them, little has been said about their family contexts and the effects they may suffer as a consequence of imprisonment. This invisibility is serious in the Colombian context, where the drug trafficking has especially impacted on family and community relations, not only as a consequence of this activity in itself, but also because of the effect that the hardening of sentences and the premise that they should focus on the use of prison. Therefore, although the vulnerability of persons deprived of their liberty is recognized and, in As a consequence, penal and penitentiary policies are questioned (for example, in terms of use of preventive detention and toughening of sentences in some crimes), these questions do not include analyzes related to the affectations suffered by children and adolescents as a result of the imprisonment of their parents. Several studies allow us to conclude that the populations that suffer the most the consequences of this criminal hardening are those that are in conditions of vulnerability, as women, who usually participate in the stages of transport and sale. However, these investigations do not delve into the effects that deprivation of liberty has on children and adolescents, with the exception of some mentions that are reached as a consequence of the observation of the situation of women who are mothers and are imprisoned. Details: Church World Service, 2018. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 16, 2019 at: http://www.cwslac.org/nnapes-pdd/docs/PDD-Colombia.pdf Year: 2019 Country: Colombia URL: http://www.cwslac.org/nnapes-pdd/docs/PDD-Colombia.pdf Shelf Number: 155873 Keywords: Children of InmatesDrug OffendersDrug TraffickingFamilies of PrisonersHuman Rights AbusesPrison PolicyRights of Children |
Author: Amighetti, Demalui Title: Costa Rica - Niņos y niņas con madres y padres encarcelados por delitos de drogas menores no violentos ( 103/5000 Costa Rica - Children with mothers and fathers imprisoned for non-violent minor drug offenses) Summary: This document presents the result of the information gathering process in Costa Rica, within the framework of the research project "Girls and boys with mothers and fathers imprisoned by non-violent drug crimes in Latin America and the Caribbean ". The study was aimed at generate knowledge about the specific impact that imprisonment has on the life of girls, boys and adolescents with adult referents deprived of liberty for crimes minors of drugs. The methodology developed in this study adhered to the shared work guidelines by research teams from different countries and included: data collection quantitative data on people incarcerated for drug-related crimes in the country; the documentary review; the analysis of the current national regulations on childhood, system penitentiary and drug policies; and semi-structured interviews with private women of the freedom for minor crimes related to drugs, relatives in charge of the care of their children and daughters and girls, boys and adolescents with imprisoned parents (NNAPES, from now on1 ). In In total, six interviews were conducted with imprisoned women (one of whom was already at large), five interviews with family caregivers and eleven interviews with NNAPES. All interviews are performed under consent and in environments that were suitable for each person. The fact that they have worked only with women deprived of their liberty obeys different reasons associated with the institutional processes of the Costa Rican penitentiary system and the characteristics of people who are serving time. On the one hand, there are limitations to access different penitentiary centers, especially if it is to conduct interviews. In In particular, in detention centers for men there are greater restrictions to apply for an appointment and stricter entry controls. On the other hand, among women, the fact of being mothers and being incarcerated for a crime related to drugs are two of the situations where actions by public institutions have been prioritized, so that, in Unlike men deprived of their freedom, the generation of information is encouraged and projects of empowerment and social reintegration. The main results of the investigation are aimed at confirming the negative impact that the imprisonment of women mothers has on the physical and emotional integrity of their children and underage daughters. From the perspective of the NNAPES, as well as their mothers and people caregivers, following detention have had a negative impact on their development educational and their physical and mental health. Although in most cases there is contact between the NNAPES and their mothers deprived of freedom, it is threatened by a set of geographic, cultural, material and family factors; this against the lack of protection and institutional neglect by the State. In addition to seeing threatened their right to family coexistence, the NNAPES face the lack of clear and adequate information regarding to the situation of their mothers, the presence of situations of violence at the time of detention, the neglect of the psychological consequences that the new changes in the family, the lag or drop-out of school and the residence in community spaces described as unsafe and dangerous. Details: Church World Service, 2018. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed by May 16, 2019 at: http://www.cwslac.org/nnapes-pdd/docs/PDD-Costa-Rica.pdf Year: 2019 Country: Costa Rica URL: http://www.cwslac.org/nnapes-pdd/docs/PDD-Costa-Rica.pdf Shelf Number: 155872 Keywords: Children of PrisonersDrug OffendersFamilies of InmatesFemale OffendersRights of Children |