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Safeguards against the ill-treatment of juveniles
22.
Given its mandate, the CPT's first priority during visits to places where juveniles are
deprived of their liberty is to seek to establish whether they are being subjected to deliberate
ill-treatment. The Committee's findings to date would suggest that, in most of the
establishments which it visits, this is a comparatively rare occurrence.
23.
However, as is the case for adults, it would appear that juveniles run a higher risk of
being deliberately ill-treated in police establishments than in other places of detention. Indeed,
on more than one occasion, CPT delegations have gathered credible evidence that juveniles
have featured amongst the persons tortured or otherwise ill-treated by police officers.
In this context, the CPT has stressed that it is during the period immediately
following deprivation of liberty that the risk of torture and ill-treatment is at its greatest. It
follows that it is essential that all persons deprived of their liberty (including juveniles) enjoy,
as from the moment when they are first obliged to remain with the police, the rights to notify
a relative or another third party of the fact of their detention, the right of access to a lawyer
and the right of access to a doctor.
Over and above these safeguards, certain jurisdictions recognise that the inherent
vulnerability of juveniles requires that additional precautions be taken. These include placing
police officers under a formal obligation themselves to ensure that an appropriate person is
notified of the fact that a juvenile has been detained (regardless of whether the juvenile
requests that this be done). It may also be the case that police officers are not entitled to
interview a juvenile unless such an appropriate person and/or a lawyer is present. The CPT
welcomes this approach.
24.
In a number of other establishments visited, CPT delegations have been told that it
was not uncommon for staff to administer the occasional "pedagogic slap" to juveniles who
misbehaved. The Committee considers that, in the interests of the prevention of ill-treatment,
all forms of physical chastisement must be both formally prohibited and avoided in practice.
Inmates who misbehave should be dealt with only in accordance with prescribed disciplinary
procedures.
25.
The Committee's experience also suggests that when ill-treatment of juveniles does
occur, it is more often the result of a failure adequately to protect the persons concerned from
abuse than of a deliberate intention to inflict suffering. An important element in any strategy
to prevent such abuse is observance of the principle that juveniles in detention should as a rule
be accommodated separately from adults.
Examples of a failure to respect this principle which have been observed by the
CPT have included: adult male prisoners being placed in cells for male juveniles, often with
the intention that they maintain control in those cells; female juveniles being accommodated
together with adult women prisoners; juvenile psychiatric patients sharing accommodation
with chronically ill adult patients.
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