Children of a lesser god

The non-implementation of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) 2000 has caused immense suffering for child offenders, as only 1,310 (six percent) out of the total 21,849 — 9,613 (44 percent of them under-trial prisoners) — have been convicted during the past 15 years (2005-2019). Those not yet charged have been under detention for years awaiting prosecution, according to a study conducted by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC).

At present, as many as 1500-2000 child offenders are detained in prisons across Pakistan, including 1,210 under-trial prisoners and 214 children convicted of various crimes.

The number of juveniles in Punjab jails accounted for 618 inmates, including 509 under-trial inmates and 109 convicted. No teenage girl  has been detained in Punjab.

In Sindh, there are 385 juvenile offenders incarcerated. Of these, 159 are male and 165 female under-trial inmates, while 51 females and 9 males have been convicted. A comparison of the data for 2018 and 2019 shows that the number of juvenile cases in Sindh increased from 181 to 385 cases. Only 60 were convicted in a year, while 325 cases remained under trial.

Meanwhile, as many as 368 child offenders are incarcerated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa jails and 327 of them are facing trials in courts while 41 have been convicted. However, in 2018 there were 383 cases reported in the province with a continuing extremely slow trial process.

The number of incarcerated juvenile offenders in Balochistan is 53. Only four of them have been convicted. The rest remain under trial.

It showed that the trial process under the current system of criminal justice administration remains very slow. In numerous documented cases, the children who were arrested when they were under 18,attained adulthood while still in prison, either awaiting the start of their trial or remaining under trial.

Many children and adults who were convicted of crimes committed when they were children, have received excessive or disproportionate sentences that violate international law, which requires that the imprisonment of children must be in “conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate time span.”

However vast numbers of juvenile prisoners in Pakistan are housed in overcrowded adult prisons, in miserable condition. The children under 18 are vulnerable to all forms of violence by adult prisoners, prison staff, and their own peer groups. In 2019 there were 1,424 juvenile cases reported across Pakistan, including 1,209 cases of under-trial juveniles and 215 cases of convicted juveniles.

The factual position is the state of prisons in the country, which are operating at a capacity of 128 percent, with 62.1 percent pre-trial detainees. Now, that is just one side of the decaying prison and justice system. These prisons are populated with juvenile offenders, almost 1.7 percent of the total prison population is often forced to live in adult jails. This is the side of the prison problem that no one seems to be concerned about.

Punjab has introduced a prison database system, known as the “Prisoners Management Information System) (PMIS). The PMIS data shows that 618 juvenile offenders’ cases were reported in 2019 in Punjab, in different crime categories. 109 juvenile of them have been convicted in the province.

Data compiled from the four provinces shows the indifference, apathy, and non-professional attitude of the police, which is of even graver concern when it pertains to juvenile offenders. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, for example, 28 juveniles are pending trial, due to the non-submission of official challans, which are a legal requirement. And there might be similar cases of juvenile offenders in other provinces, awaiting trials due to the non-submission of challahs or other legal requirements, or due to administrative red tape, hampering access to justice for the accused offenders. This puts so many children’s future at stake.

It was discovered that jails lacked adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities and did not even have provision for clean drinking water. Sindh has set up four centres, called Youthful Offenders’ Industrial Schools (YOISs) – in Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana and Sukkur. They are reportedly housing fewer prisoners than the authorised capacity. These are reported to house around 210 juvenile inmates, including 8 foreigners. Additionally, Sindh has one Remand Home for children in Karachi. Considering the population of Karachi, and its astronomical crime rate, this is not even a drop in the ocean of need for the rehabilitative, reintegrative care and protection of juvenile offenders. There are a number of reports of juvenile offenders who are not incarcerated, only due to lack of proper facilities. The Central Prison Karachi is the most overcrowded of the 25 prisons in Sindh. Both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have yet to establish a functioning Borstal Institution (under JJSO 2000) or a JRC (under JJSA 2018).

Meanwhile, there is an urgent need for an independent assessment and evaluation of a previously well-functioning juvenile jail at Haripur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Two decades ago, it housed juvenile boys and kept them separate from adult men in the Haripur jail. It provided adolescent youths in its care both, education and vocational skills-training classes, notably, computer training. A sizable number of desktop and laptop computers were donated for the boys by philanthropists and rights activists, through a private initiative. However, according to a report, it is now abundantly clear that there are insufficient facilities, untrained personnel, inadequate resources, and an absence of the concept of child rights, child protection, child care and child rehabilitation at this jail.

Commenting on the situation of juvenile offenders, leading lawyer and Human Rights activist Ahmed Khan said, globally there are now a number of mechanisms, entities and processes for the rehabilitation, education, skills training, and eventual reintegration of juvenile offenders back into their communities and societies. However, in Pakistan, before the introduction of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) 2000, only the Borstal institutions existed. Globally these are now considered outmoded, and the name itself is no longer in vogue. They are now being replaced by Juvenile Rehabilitation Centres (JRCs).

Borstal Institutions Article 37 of the UNCRC explicitly stipulates that deprivation of liberty, i.e. imprisonment, is to be used “only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate time”. Unfortunately, such vague, non-specific language allows a lot of leeway for member states, governments and authorities to interpret the terms as they wish. Imprisonment “only as a last resort” leaves plenty of room for severe punitive or retributive responses by legislators, judges and the police.

The word “appropriate” can be and is most often interpreted as making the punishment severe enough to fit the crime, maintaining “proportionate” approaches to sentencing.

Adnan Alvi, another lawyer working on children rights, said the JJSO 2000 also reactivated the old, dysfunctional rehabilitative justice option for juvenile offenders, i.e. detention in Borstal Institutions, away from adult prisoners in regular jails. Borstal Institutions are a relatively modern concept, practised in the more technologically advanced countries, of housing juvenile offenders in reformation and rehabilitation centres, designed primarily to protect them from interaction with, and proximity to, adult convicts.

Globally, such institutions offer education and vocational skills training facilities, aiming to help resocialise juvenile offenders, and stop making children criminals. Eventually it reintegrates them back into society upon their release. But in Pakistan, despite being a component of the JJSO 2000, the concept of a rehabilitative justice system through special institutions, has not been implemented, due to prevailing societal norms and notions of the effectiveness and acceptability of a more punitive, harsh model of criminal justice for child offenders. It was observed in 2018 that, even 18 years after the promulgation of the JJSO 2000, the stipulated Borstal detention-cum-education and training facilities for juvenile offenders had not yet been established in all four provinces.