Adding its voice to the clamour for the charge of wandering to be scrapped, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has noted that it contributes to discrimination against girls, a high number of whom are left to languish in juvenile detention facilities.
In a statement issued on Thursday after its first quarterly meeting, the GHRA condemned the extent to which juvenile welfare services continue to fail young people.
The human rights body noted that a higher number of young girls are incarcerated at the New Opportunity Corps (NOC) for the non-criminal offence of wandering, compared with young boys.
Based on research, approximately 75% of the girls who passed through the facility in 2015 were charged with wandering, compared with some 7% of boys.
Over 35% of total number of girls charged with wandering end up at the NOC, the statement said. In general, the boys sent to the NOC were charged with serious offences, such as grievous bodily harm, the GHRA stated, noting that this trend suggested that the NOC is becoming a facility where delinquent boys are housed with girls who have committed no crime at all.
This, the association views as unacceptable, since it is aggravated by the fact that wandering is not a crime. “It is a device used in a discriminating manner by the magistrates’ courts to detain girl children considered to be vulnerable, mostly from having been found with young men older than themselves,” the statement said.
And while it is routine for such men to be detained by the police for a day or so before being released, the girls are placed before the courts “often on flimsy evidence, prompted more by normal prejudice rather than legal principle.”
The statement contended that rather than being sent home or placed in alternative child care while the probation service assesses the matter, magistrates usually opt to remand wanderers to the Juvenile Holding Centre at Sophia. The conditions at this facility, which houses boys and girls aged 12 to 16 years old, are unacceptable and must be addressed urgently, the GHRA said. It consists of cells for girls on one flat and boys on the other, with no facilities for any activity whether indoor or outdoor, though the staff do their best to mount educational programmes and provide intermittent counselling.
Despite protests by parents/ guardians, juveniles may remain at Sophia from anywhere between a week to several months depending on magistrates’ schedules, the association said, urging that children, girls especially, should only be detained at such facilities as a last resort as stipulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Pushing for the scrapping of the charge of wandering, it advocated for its replacement with legal remedies that can focus on making older males aware that by encouraging young girls into leaving home, they stand the chance of being charged with grooming, under the Sexual Offences Act. “Laying ‘grooming’ charges against serial offenders should have a sobering effect on others,” it said.
Nevertheless, the GHRA said it was encouraged by the recent announcement that the Probation Service is to be restored to its original criminal justice-related purpose after years of being absorbed into welfare-related functions.
“Hopefully, this implies that facilities such as the Holding Centre and the NOC will get more systematic professional attention and support from the Probation Service,” the statement added.
