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)