Al Jazeera English: VIDEO: Hard Time

[SealLion]

All across the Philippines, children as young as 9 or even younger are in jail for various crimes, including prostitution, pettty theft and a whole lot of other crimes.

Sound familiar??

Brazil anyone??


There's a good video on one of Al Jazeera's programs on thier website.
I found this one to be pretty good. It's about 13 mins. long but definitly a good watch if your interested.

Here's a short brief:


Filmmaker Kylie Grey gained extensive access to a group of children being incarcerated in the Cebu City prison in the southern Philippines.

In the following account, she describes the making of her film Hard Time, and the issues behind the child prisoners' heartbreaking stories.....


Ya. It's pretty sad to say the least.

Most of these kids grow up in crime.
It's thier only way of living while on the street.
Living on the street has basically thier only education while growing up.
Most are illiterate.
All are poor.
Most are abondoned by thier families for various reasons.


Here's the link:


Al Jazeera English - WITNESS - Filmmaker's view: Hard Time (http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2009/10/200910157570685155.html)

[alpacino]

All across the Philippines, children as young as 9 or even younger are in jail for various crimes, including prostitution, pettty theft and a whole lot of other crimes.

Sound familiar??

Brazil anyone??There is no children jail in Brazil the way you suggest or this article depicts. But there are crimes practiced by children. There's much poverty in some areas in Brazil but there ain't no prison for kids, like there are prison for adults. What this article about the Philippines has in common with Brazil is the children exploitation, as in drug trafficking, tourist pick-pocketing, slavery, prostitution and so on, but not prison for kids. What there is, is some states have juvenile correction facilities, which unfortunately never worked, and some states just have no kind of enforcement to deal with juvenile criminals.

Most of these kids grow up in crime.
It's thier only way of living while on the street.
Living on the street has basically thier only education while growing up.
Most are illiterate.
All are poor.
Most are abondoned by thier families for various reasons.
It is indeed very sad to wake up and see news like these, hopeless children striving for another day in life.

[SealLion]

so for those states in Brazil that have no kind of enforcement with juvenile criminals, what does happen then??

[alpacino]

Brazil is a big country and vastly not uniform in many aspects. If an underage criminal is caught with low to medium severity, they simply have to attend to a special juvenile court monitored with their parents, where in this case their parents can be forced to answer for their crimes and pay up all the damages. Recurring criminals may face harder penalties. For high severity crimes, which include murder, rape and crimes against life, they are imprisoned in special facilities, to wait for proper judgement and in special occasions can be treated as legal age and such. But nothing like the video from Philippines where you see children trapped with much older men. At max I'd say 16 or 17, would be imprisoned with other adults.

[slikrapid]

What there is, is some states have juvenile correction facilities, which unfortunately never worked, and some states just have no kind of enforcement to deal with juvenile criminals.


well, i'd say that these so called correction facilities are probably quite similar to jails, some even worse, so sometimes it's just difference in semantics - outsiders can just guess about the conditions unless they have insider knowledge or personal experience

[alpacino]

well, i'd say that these so called correction facilities are probably quite similar to jails, some even worse, so sometimes it's just difference in semantics - outsiders can just guess about the conditions unless they have insider knowledge or personal experience

Yes, true. But they don't have iron bar like cells and stuff, making it easy for runaways, as it always happens with the dangerous teenagers there. They have more of a social service than a penalty service, with counselors and psychologists. The system itself is very flawed, in the end it doesn't do its "correcting" job and these teenagers are left to became adult criminals in the incoming years, sadly.

[slikrapid]

another example of child prisoners, this time its about palestinian children at israeli jails (with video):


http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/09/05/video-of-palestinian-children-at-israeli-jail


According to the human rights organization “Defence for Children International” (DCI), many children were jailed under administrative detention without any charge or trial.

Administrative detention is often based on “secret evidence.” Israeli military order 1226 empowers military commanders to detain Palestinians, including children, for up to six months if they have “reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention.” The initial six month period can be extended by additional six-month periods, indefinitely.

The DCI confirmed that the Palestinian child detainees routinely face violations of their human rights during arrest, interrogation and imprisonment. They are exposed to physical and psychological abuse, amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and sometimes torture. They are denied prompt access to a lawyer and often denied contact with their families and the outside world. These children face substandard conditions of detention and are denied access to proper education services.

[SealLion]

that was a very interesting video indeed.

I can understand why the IDF arrests and detains children after they have either killed a member of the IDF or threatened one with some kind of makeshift weapon.

To hold them and prevent further actions by these kids

Most likely, these kids are trained and exploited by thier adult handlers that are the real terrorists.

I do agree with what is spoken about in the video about the fact that some of these jailed kids should be re-rehabilitated rather than jailed. But according to the video, there didn't seem to be any evidence of that.

It's clearly a mistake to exploit children for terrorists reasons.
That's for sure.

But it's equally a mistake to jail children, hold them in detention indefinitely over recurring 6- months detention periods.
And then to jail and treat them as condemmed adults.

what to do??.........

rehabilitation is the only thing that I can think of atm.

Maybe somebody needs to rehabilitate the IDF and it's associated government officials leading such programs.

when the video interviewed the government official on topic, she mentioned that Israel has made some strides (apparantly). But from the website and the video and what's shown.

That statement is more akin to government propaganda.