JAMAICA/CHILDREN: U.S. Group Wants Children Freed from Adult Jails
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (IPS) - A U.S. human rights body is urging the government of Jamaica to immediately release all children from police lock-ups whose conditions the agency describes as appalling.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch/Americas has just issued a report based on findings from a Jun. 19-24 visit to the island. It says children should not be held in adult prisons. But if they are, they should have no contact with adult prisoners.
A researcher for the Children's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch visited lockups and juvenile correctional institutions located in Kingston and St. Andrew in Jamaica's south-east, interviewing senior police, correctional officials, and more than 40 children who were in detention or living on the streets.
The new report says children in Jamaica continue to be held in lockups that local and international human rights organisations have denounced as inhumane.
"Children as young as 10 years of age are locked in dark, overcrowded filthy cells which they share with rodents and insects," says the report.
It says young detainees who are locked up face physical and mental abuse from police and other inmates and are often denied appropriate medical attention for injuries.
Human Rights Watch/Americas notes that police take children to police lock-ups instead of releasing them to their guardians or taking them to "places of safety" -- alternative residential institutions designed for young people. It says the island's one juvenile remand centre for boys is always over-crowded.
The organisation says 17-year-olds -- and sometimes children as young as 13 years -- are classified as adults and tried in adult criminal courts without the protections of the Family Court, which was established to ensure the best interests of children are considered.
Jamaica ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child two years ago and is therefore required to report to a U.N. committee on its compliance with the agreement. The information submitted by the Kingston government in Oct. 1993 does not address any of the concerns of Human Rights Watch/Americas.
The government noted that the country's constitution says among its Fundamental Rights and Freedoms that "No person shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment." (OORE/IPS)
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