not contacted the Agency with a view to launching and implementing the Roadmap for the implementation of the Concept Paper on the Government Policy in the Field of Juvenile Justice. The State Agency for Child Protection pointed out that a repeat inspection had been carried out at the CBS in the town of Rakitovo (in the Pazardzhik province) between 17 and 19 June 2014. According to the CBS management, there were no children victims of violence placed there. The SACP disagreed with the NPM’s view regarding the location of the said CBS and the ensuing isolation of the children there. According to the CBS principal the children were well integrated in the community. The SACP had made recommendations on how to regulate the ways and opportunities to have the children engaged in meaningful work, as well as to review the access control procedures. The Ministry of Interior, for its part, had ordered in accordance with its powers the Regional Directorates to carry out on-site inspections of the security arrangements at all SACP and CBS. The results from the inspections carried out by the National Preventive Mechanism showed in a clear and unambiguous way the need for a reform. The currently existing institutions – CBS and SPBS – do not meet children’s needs and are unable to correct their behaviours. Nor do they facilitate their subsequent socialization, successful rehabilitation, and social reintegration. The concurrent existence of two different systems – on the one hand, the children are offenders, but on the other hand, they are children at risk in need of protection measures under the Child Protection Act, contradicts contemporary views of child and juvenile justice. It is these children who suffer the negative effects of the unreformed system. As part of the efforts to implement the Concept Paper on the Government Policy in the Field of Juvenile Justice, a working group at the Ministry of Justice has been drafting a Juvenile Criminal Justice Act. The working group includes an expert from the NPM. The main purpose of the new legislation is to protect the interests of minors involved in criminal judicial proceedings, as well as to provide protection for the rights of child victims and child witnesses of crime. The focus of criminal proceedings is shifting from their punitive and retributive nature to child-sensitive alternatives. The law will enshrine the principle of criminal justice diversion. Its implementation will provide an opportunity to refer children in conflict with the law to diversionary programs to avoid criminal conviction. As a result many cases would be settled by nonjudicial bodies or by the bodies involved in pre-trial proceedings. Most importantly, the enactment of the new law will repeal the Combating Juvenile Delinquency Act, which, even though still in force, contradicts contemporary standards of child and juvenile justice. It is particularly worrying that children are still being penalized for antisocial behaviour for which adults are not criminally responsible. By way of example, the current law provides for the imposition of “educative and corrective measures” for the so called “status-related offences” and survival behaviours. Such measures include confinement to a boarding school. The possible reasons behind a decision to place a child in a boarding school include the low social status of his or her family, the poor living conditions under which a child is raised, etc. Poverty-related circumstances are used to justify the imposition of sanctions for behaviour modification purposes, which contradicts contemporary child protection standards. The NPM notes with concern that the Preschool and School Education Act (PSSEA) expands, in contravention of the ongoing child and juvenile justice reform, the conditions for the placement in Social and Pedagogical Boarding Schools. Thus, the PSSEA provides that SPBS are schools for 47