No error in handling Kotagede boy: Police

No error in handling Kotagede boy: Police

JAKARTA (JP): Police yesterday said there had been no
procedural errors in their handling of a nine-year-old boy whom
they held for 52 days, including one week in an adult prison in
Yogyakarta, in connection with a petty theft.

Maj. Gen. Mangatar Bilang Hutagalung, the deputy for
operational affairs of the national police, said the boy had been
held for the extended period because neither of his parents had
been willing to take him.

A child protection agency had sent the boy back to the police
because it did not have the facilities to accommodate him,
Hutagalung said.

The boy became headline news last week after it became known
that he had been kept in the Wirogunan prison in Yogyakarta.

It was Permadi Satrio Wiwoho, the controversial mystic who is
in Wirogunan awaiting trial on charges of blasphemy, who raised
the alarm about the presence of the boy in the jail.

Officials at the ministry of justice, which administers
prisons, have blamed the police and the prosecutors' office for
the incident, saying that the boy should never have been detained
in the first place. They have said that the administrators of
Wirogunan could not refuse to take the boy when the prosecutor's
office sent him there.

The boy, who is in the third grade of elementary school in the
Kotagede subdistrict in of Yogyakarta, was detained in late April
after he allegedly tried to steal a caged bird worth Rp 4,000
($1.70). He was detained at the police precinct for 45 days,
after which he was transferred to Wirogunan, where he spent seven
days before finally being released. The boy was never charged.

Hutagalung said the boy had committed offenses in the past.
"There have been at least eight occasions on which he tried to
steal birds from houses in the neighborhood."

He said the boy came from a broken home. "His parents divorced
three years ago and each has since remarried."

The Kotagede police precinct had approached his parents at
least four times, asking them to take the child, Hutagalung said.
"They said they couldn't, and they even signed a statement to
that effect," he added.

Police later turned to Bispa, a counseling agency for children
and families in Yogyakarta, but they only kept the boy for five
days, after which they returned him to the precinct because they
did not have the facilities to accommodate the boy.

Hutagalung said the report from the Kotagede precinct showed
that while in police detention the boy had been free to roam
around the precinct's yard during the day. He had been required
to spend nights in the cell, however.

"On the basis of the reports we have received, we have found
no violations of procedure," he said.

The boy is now reportedly in the care of his grandmother.
There are no reports or indications that he was abused during his
incarceration.

Hutagalung said that, in the absence of legislation dealing
with juvenile delinquents, all criminal cases involving children
would, necessarily, continue to be dealt with under the general
Criminal Code.

He said the police would support any plan to enact a special
law on child delinquency and to establish juvenile detention
centers to house children like the Kotagede boy. (bsr/emb)