Prevention and re-education reforms for juvenile violators in Tajikistan need to be accelerated.
Juvenile justice reforms have been underway in the country for more than a decade, but their pace leaves much to be desired, experts say.
In the last few years, the country has seen an increase in juvenile delinquency. Although according to official statistics, child crime is consistently just above 3% of the total number of crimes, human rights activists are concerned that the tendency is not decreasing.
At a press conference on the results of 2019, announcing data on child crime in the country, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Tajikistan noted that 90% of crimes are committed by children left unattended by adults and not attending school.
Experts and human rights activists believe that the outflow of parents into labor migration, the general economic situation in the country, and a number of other reasons contribute to this.
Unfortunately, the statistics provided by government agencies, which can be found in the public domain, are incomplete. It does not cover all the data, does not contain a breakdown by gender, and other data on children who have committed crimes, experts say.
Daler Barombekov, head of the Department of Sociological Research at Tajik National University, said the country lacks research and analysis on which category of children commit crimes.
"We are used to the standard saying that more crimes are committed by marginalized children. Of course, socioeconomic conditions affect that factor. If a family is in a marginal class, then the child is automatically written into that group, and becomes marginalized. But no one has ever analyzed how many children from rich families, the so-called "golden children," commit crimes. For some reason it is believed that they are allowed to commit crimes, no one pays attention to this," he told CABAR.asia.
In 2021, the NGO Tashabbusi Hukuki (Legal Initiative) conducted a study, Juvenile Justice Analysis 2020, which highlights that while there is data on children registered by the justice system, there is no disaggregation, no analysis, or information on the number of child victims and witnesses of crime.
The study notes that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended Tajikistan to collect and publish data on children who have been in contact with the criminal justice system, disaggregated by age, gender, disability, geographic location, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. (Source - paragraph 47(i) of the Concluding Recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child)
There is no publicly available information on the number of children incarcerated and serving sentences for crimes in the country's only children's correctional colony, J/C 3/12.
The study, citing data in the Tajik media, reports that at least 40 children per year end up in closed detention facilities.
Meanwhile, the state system of re-education and prevention in the country is not properly established and does not contribute to reducing crime among children, noted Gulchehra Rakhmanova, a national expert in the protection and promotion of child rights in Tajikistan and head of the Tashabbusi Hukuki NGO.
During an expert meeting organized by the analytical platform CABAR.asia, she noted that the investigation and court system for juveniles and children do not comply with international norms. Reforms in the juvenile justice system, which began more than ten years ago, are being implemented slowly and leave much to be desired.
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Despite the fact that Tajikistan began the process of juvenile justice reform back in 2004, and the country has adopted a number of important programs, laws, and initiatives to protect the rights of the child, the norms related to justice for children are not taken into account and are not applied in practice.
"In Tajikistan, a lot of changes have been made to the Criminal Code. There is a separate paragraph devoted to dealing with cases involving children, many articles where a child commits a crime and goes through the justice system have been humanized. But if we speak about the practice and the general system, it's not enshrined in the law," said Rakhmanova.
Cases against juveniles are not handled by specialized investigators and are heard by common law judges. The country has not created conditions conducive to a friendlier attitude towards children who come into conflict with the law, which of course does not contribute to the re-education of this category of children.
Many juvenile cases are often handled by inexperienced, newly appointed judges. Although according to changes in the law, they should be experienced judges with at least 10 years of experience.
"Sometimes it even happens that prosecutors don't always know the approaches when it comes to children. Investigators - the exact same situation, they [specialized investigators to juvenile cases] do not exist. And they are not regulated or allocated by law in any way. Lawyers, again, there are also no specialized ones," she said.
The situation is even worse with child psychologists and social workers, said Rakhmanova.
"We have problems with psychologists, with social workers. Specially trained child psychologists, you can just count them on the fingers. And all of them are mainly based in the capital. The situation is very difficult in the regions," said the human rights activist.
She noted that the country also has a big problem with social workers, and there are not even laws under which state social workers would provide assistance to children in contact with the law and even to children who have suffered from violence.
"In 2017, we had a child protection law passed. But, unfortunately, the norms related to justice for children, this law does not provide. And despite the fact that we have repeatedly written and commented about it, the situation has not changed," Rakhmanova said.
Law enforcement agencies also do not provide data on the gender division of children who have committed crimes.
The study "Analysis of Juvenile Justice in 2020" provides data for 2017 and 2019, noting that in Tajikistan, as in many countries around the world, girls commit far fewer offenses than boys. For example, 664 boys and 26 girls committed crimes in 2017, and 34 girls and 673 boys committed crimes in 2019, which is about 4 percent of the total number of crimes committed by juveniles.
As one of the achievements of the juvenile system of the country, Gulchehra Rakhmanova notes that girls who committed offenses are no longer held in the general colony for adult women, as it was done before.
Since 2009, girl delinquents and girl victims have been sent for rehabilitation to the Charogi Hidoyat Center for Girls, which is run by the State Committee for Women and Family Affairs. At this center, social workers provide rehabilitation and educational programs for girls from 10 to 18 years of age who have been sexually abused, mistreated, and trafficked. The center provides girls with free psychological counseling and medical and social services.
Rakhmanova reported that alternative punitive measures for children have been piloted in five districts of the republic since 2009. And positive results have been observed there.
There are rehabilitation centers for children in conflict with the law in five towns and districts of Sughd Region - cities of Khujand, Konibodom, Isfara, Panjakent, and Bobojon Gafurov District. These centers were created on the basis of additional education centers of the Ministry of Education and Science of Tajikistan with the financial support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Tajikistan. Children are sent to local Commissions on the Rights of the Child, where social workers help them. The centers have proven their effectiveness over the years, Rakhmanova said. But so far they have not gone beyond piloting.
"And now it's 2022, and we're still at the piloting level. And are we going to expand this system?" - says Rakhmanova.
Now the country has adopted and operates programs that are designed to improve the situation with the prevention of juvenile delinquency.
In June 2017, Tajikistan adopted the Child Justice Reform Program for 2017-2021 and its Action Plan. On June 25, 2020, Tajikistan approved the Program for the Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration of Juveniles Served in Penitentiary Institutions or Restrictions of Freedom for 2020-2024. On July 30, 2020, the National Program on Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency for 2020-2024 and the Action Plan for the implementation of the program were approved by the Decree of the Government of Tajikistan № 431.
A number of state structures are involved in the system of prevention of juvenile delinquency, such as child rights commissions, guardianship and custody agencies, local executive bodies of state authority, child rights commissioner, health and social protection agencies, education and science agencies, labor, migration and employment agencies, committees on women and family affairs, youth, sports and tourism, police, prosecutors, courts, etc. and non-governmental organizations. Coordination of the activities of state actors in the system of prevention of juvenile delinquency is coordinated by the Commission on the Rights of the Child under the Government of Tajikistan.
However, judging by the fact that delinquency among children is not decreasing, it's too early to say that this work is done at the appropriate level, say the experts.
"Unfortunately, our basic education system is very poor. Now the school does not give the minimum education for children, which is necessary. They have nothing to do in school. When children come out of the schoolyard, no one knows what they are doing. Parents are at work from morning till night, as if that's how it should be. The bulk of the population doesn't do anything. And it turns out that parents blame the school, teachers blame the parents, and children remain on the street," said Daler Barombekov.
He believes that parents are not ready and not able to give their children quality education, which is required by 21st-century standards.
"Children are raised differently now because the external and real situations of parents and children are different. Children now have a different, virtual reality, and parents are not ready to accept this and give their children what they see on the Internet," Barombekov said.
In 2011, Tajikistan adopted the Law on Parents' Responsibility for Children's Upbringing and Education. The law establishes fines of 120 TJS (the US $10) for parents for violating it. According to official data, more than 13,000 cases of parental responsibility were heard by the courts in 2020. Almost 6,000 citizens received warnings and another 7,200 paid fines totaling 1.1 million somonis ($96,000).
However, Gulchehra Rakhmanova believes that these fines do not solve the problem of juvenile delinquency and it is necessary to strengthen work in this direction.
"It is difficult for me to answer this question because I did not study it, there was no monitoring and no analysis. But the fact that crime among children is increasing every year probably says a lot. After all, the goal of prevention is to reduce crime, but if it is growing, then there is a question to those structures that are responsible for it, "- said Gulchehra Rakhmanova.
This material was prepared within the framework of the IWPR project "Amplify, Verify, Engage: Information for Democratisation and Good Governance in Eurasia", funded by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and the mentoring program of the "Development of New Media and Digital Journalism in Central Asia" project, implemented by the Institute for War Reporting and Peace (IWPR) with the support of the UK Government. The content of this publication does not reflect the official views of IWPR, the Norwegian Foreign Office, or the UK Government.