Juveniles send to adult jail for petty crime
Juveniles send to adult jail for petty crime
JAKARTA (JP): The Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) office in
Bandarlampung, capital of Lampung province, discovered yesterday
another case of juveniles convicted of a petty offense being sent
to an adult prison.
Dedy Mawardi, the director of LBH Bandarlampung, told The
Jakarta Post yesterday that the five boys, all third grade pupils
at a local school, were held by the local police precinct for one
week and then at the Rajabasa correctional facility for 13 days.
They were detained for stealing a set of car speakers worth Rp
22,500 ($10) from a car parked at the Tanjungkarang shopping
plaza on May 16, he said.
The boys were released on June 6 after their parents lodged a
complaint with the Lampung Legislative Council, he added.
Dedy, who is representing the boys in Lampung, said the five
were picked up from their homes on the night after the incident
was reported to the police.
Questioning
They were brought to the plaza's security room for questioning
and later transferred to the police precinct where they were kept
for one week. Afterwards they were put in the care of the
Rajabasa correctional facility.
"Those kids, however, still have to report to the city police
every day," he said.
Officials at the Bandarlampung Police Headquarters were not
available for comment yesterday. "I am not able to give a
statement," said an on-duty officer at the precinct.
Dedy said the police are proceeding with their prosecution of
the five boys.
The lawyer said LBH Bandarlampung had already written to the
Bandarlampung police expressing its concern over what he called a
violation of criminal code procedures.
Depression
Because of the detention the children missed their school
exams and are now undergoing bouts of depression, he said.
The LBH also urged the police to drop the requirement that the
five boys continue reporting to the police each day. In future
interrogations of children, they added, they should take into
account the ages and mental conditions of the suspects.
This is the second disclosure in the past two weeks of minors
being sent by the police to adult jails for minor offenses.
The first one in Yogyakarta involved a nine-year-old boy from
the Kotagede district. He was held for 52 days -- 45 in the
Kotagede police precinct and seven days in the Wirogunan
correctional facility -- on suspicion of stealing a bird worth Rp
4,500 ($1.7).
The boy has since been released, but the report stirred
outrage among some legal experts and human rights activists who
said that the authorities should have simply sent the boy back to
his parents.
Police have denied any procedural error in handling the case,
stressing that there was no juvenile delinquency center in the
city to care for the boy.
The incident continued to reverberate yesterday with the
police in Yogyakarta defending their decision to hold the boy on
grounds that he had been implicated in a similar offense seven
times previously, Antara reported.
Chief of the Yogyakarta Police, Maj. Gen. Harimas said that
rather than indulging in blaming games, the case should serve as
a valuable lesson of the need to strengthen the way people raise
their children.
What would become of the boy if nothing was done to rectify
the situation, he asked.
Harimas said because of the controversy the boy's detention
had caused, the case has now been taken over by the National
Police headquarters in Jakarta. (imn)