Indonesia will no longer hold children as young as 8 years old with teens in prison or with adults in police cells, an official said on Wednesday.
Police signed an agreement Tuesday with five government departments to keep child defendants between the ages of 8 and 12 out of children’s penitentiaries, said Arist Merdeka Sirait, the secretary-general of the National Commission for Children’s Rights. The criminal justice system does not deal with children younger than 8.
Police will also abandon the practice of holding child defendants for short periods with adults in crowded police cells, Sirait said.
Children’s penitentiaries are designed for youths between 12 and 18, but the practice has been to also incarcerate younger children while they await trial.
The new agreement means that child suspects under 12 years old will be kept in the same government-run detention centers as convicted children of the same ages.
Sirait praised the agreement as a major improvement.
“We need to fully create an environment in which children feel protected even when they have committed offenses,” he said. “In many cases, children who were put in jail became worse because the prison environment is not good for children.”
Sirait said there were currently 4,726 children under the age of 18 recorded as being held in penal detention, in a country of 235 million. He said the actual number could be higher.
Associated Press
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