Young offenders need help not condemnation to a life of crime, says deputy police chief
CYPRUS urgently needs a juvenile facility to avoid turning young offenders into hardened criminals.
Deputy Police Chief Soteris Charalambous yesterday highlighted the need for the creation of a juvenile correctional facility staffed by criminologists, social workers and psychologists, far from the lifers and hardened criminals in the central prison.
Referring to three youths he personally arrested after a failed bank robbery on Monday, Charalambous said these boys needed help not sentencing. The three were caught red-handed after taking £22,100 from a Co-op Bank in Strovolos, using fake guns. All three, aged between 19 and 20 years of age, were remanded in custody yesterday for eight days.
“There needs to be a juvenile centre set up immediately, far away from and with no connection to the prison, staffed by criminologists, social workers and psychologists, and all together working to reform the kids instead of sending them to share cells with hardened criminals and then back into society,” said Charalambous.
“Society is not ready yet to help these kids yet. Tomorrow they will go to prison for two to three years. They will leave from a criminal institute and go back into society.
But they won’t be accepted by society and will end up criminals because there is no kind of reform institute for these kids,” he added.
The Deputy Police Chief said he had been very troubled by the latest act of juvenile crime. He highlighted the need for a mechanism that would help young violators, instead of throwing their lives away because of one robbery or for smoking a few joints.
“I spoke to them for a while. They troubled me. What do we have to do? How do we support them, reform them to reintegrate into society as proper people? I felt sorry for them, these kids need help.”
Justice Minister Doros Theodorou acknowledged the likelihood of young violators becoming criminals after a stint in the central prison. “We are aware of the problem and are trying to solve it,” he said.
A study on juvenile delinquency costing £30,000 will be submitted to the ministry by April, said Theodorou, adding that by the end of June, the government will have in place a comprehensive national policy on juvenile delinquency.
Law Commissioner Lida Koursoumba is currently heading a committee directed to review and modernise the country’s penal code. The minister said their work should be completed within eight months.
Other measures taken to deal with the current phenomenon are the proposal to hire 10 more social workers specialised in acting as guardians for young violators and the designation of Block Eight (capacity of 120) of the central prisons for juvenile delinquents.
Theodorou said work had started on the creation of a Psychiatric Centre and Rehabilitation Centre at the prisons, each holding 15 persons. This way the correctional facility can provide young violators with the right tools to return them back to society, he said.
