I, as an average Moroccan citizen, demand complete abolition of prison sentences for children!
Prison is not an appropriate place for children, ‘children’ and ‘prison’ as mere words do not go together. Most jailed children come from difficult backgrounds and troubled families, so the last thing they need is to be locked up.
I think that it’s enough to keep ‘guilty’ children overnight at a police station, to scare the pants off them, let alone if you keep them in prison for years. Their childhood is then totally destroyed! The trauma of the environment of a prison is enough, alone, to make of these children worse individuals in the long run.
What alternative measures are there if we are not to jail children? Oh, so many, I tell you. First of all, why would anyone involved in an offence caused by a juvenile rush, first thing, to the police? Community solidarity and reconciliation should be promoted in every society, third worlds and first worlds alike, as this issue is a global one. When a case should involve the judicial system, there should be some organizations who make sure the trials pronounced are fair enough towards the victim and the convicted child. Then, what I suggest as a punishment is community service. Community service is the key solution for this whole issue! I truly believe in that!
First of all, if the convicted child does not have a shelter, provide him with one and fix the real root of the problem. Also, if a ‘guilty’ kid is thought to have psychological problems, then he should be provided with the care he needs to fix that, NOT put in prison to aggravate his state. Prison should truly be the last resort for children, and the rare cases when this should be applied are yet to be defined following very strict standards.
Then, provide the kid in question with education, health care and genuine love.
Once there, start making him responsible of the act he’s done. Depending on the gravity of the offence committed, the child should first start working for the community and realize he’s deprived of his weekends and ’some’ trips with other kids for something wrong he has done [yes, basically there should be trips and fun and weekends in children's home].
Then, if the judicial system thinks that’s not enough of a punishment, the ’sentence’ should carry on with children to their adulthood, when they’ll have some determined sums of money abstracted from their salaries, for a predefined period of time, until it’s judged that they have done and paid enough for their committed offence.
Sticking to these children until they become responsible adults is the responsibility of the government, and it’s that way that we’d be fixing the root of the problem, not by locking kids up.
I hope I am not dreaming too much here. I really hope this can be done, and that it’s close to be reachable.
I would appreciate it very much if I have people from other countries tell me how juveniles are punished in their countries through comments.
In Morocco, we have the Association of Friends of Reform Centers and Child Protection [Association des amis des centres de réforme et de la protection de l'enfance (AACRPE)] that aims to help children be in a more bearable environment inside prisons. That’s a good start I think, and may we reach the time when there will be very few -say no- locked up children.
An event is organized by the AACRPE on September 28th at Hyatt Regency, in Casablanca, to collect funds in order to achieve the construction of new cells.
Would you like to contribute to this initiative, please send your donations to AACRPE’s bank account; details are given on the image below [022...74]:
[If you are abroad, please add the swift code that you can also see on the image below:]
We are certainly virtual, but we are far from being useless.
Thanks to YOU:
- A blogger of the Moroccan blogosphere is working on the new websites for the AACRPE. Please have a gander at AACRPE.org and Wladna.org; ‘wladna’ is Moroccan Arabic for ‘our children’.
- A young man got recently out of jail and was recruited by a company where one of our Moroccan bloggers works. For your information, the young man is an economics graduate.
“Children do not belong in prison. Children should go to school. They should play and enjoy themselves“, Defence for Children International (DCI).
– Read what others think about children and prison:
How prison damages children.
Prison is not for kids.
– To learn more about “Let’s blog usefully”:
Bloguonsutile.
Let’s blog usefully.
