23 May 2022

Imprisonment of juvenile offenders must be a last resort and applied only in exceptional circumstances.

 The focus should instead be on rehabilitation, Extension II Magistrate Court’s senior magistrate, Ms Queen Moanga said at the close of a two-day workshop on alternatives to imprisonment in Gaborone on Friday.

 Ms Moanga expressed  doubt that the committal of a child to prison was the most appropriate form to rehabilitate such an offender.

She said studies had shown that imprisonment had long term negative effects on children sentenced to lengthy prison terms  as they usually came out with elevated criminal behaviour often graduating from petty to hardened and more serious crime.

“It does not work in the best interest of the child. Juvenile prisons are not by any chance better than those of the elderly convicts,” she said adding that they were subjected to the same treatment.

Rather than solving the problem of juvenile delinquency, incarceration removed the child from the normal setup of the society, said Ms Moanga.

She noted that child offenders mostly committed petty theft, house-breaking, breaking into motor vehicles and the use of dagga and only in some instances, were juveniles involved in more serious crimes such as robbery.

Ms Moanga said under the Children’s Act, children found to be in conflict with the law could be placed on probation for a period not less than six months or more than three years, sent to a school of industry for a period not exceeding three years or until they attained the age of 21, sentenced to community service, subjected to corporal punishment or imprisonment.

Though probation was believed to be one of the most appropriate and non-custodial ways of rehabilitating juvenile offenders, Ms Moanga said there was a serious shortage of probation officers. 

“Other than the shortage of probation officers, probation sentences were not well supervised. Schools of industry are also under-resourced with minimal or no government assistance,” she said.

She said probation and schools of industry were therefore not producing the desired results.

Ms Moanga advised that upon completion of a sentence, the name of a child must be expunged from the record. 

“Though having served their sentence and successfully rehabilitated, a young person who was still attached to the criminal acts of their childhood will have a sanction on getting employment and other opportunities in life,” she said. 

She called for the financing of juvenile rehabilitation centres and amendment of laws to reduce juvenile detention. 

Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development’s Family Welfare Services head, Ms Margaret Mokgachane concurred with Ms Moanga that community service was the most ignored form of child rehabilitation. 

She said probation seemed to be the preferred method of disposing of children’s matters. 

Currently, she said, social workers at councils were charged with an additional responsibility  of providing probation services.

On corporal punishment, Ms Mokgachane said though acceptable in Botswana, other societies viewed it more of abuse than a reprimand. 

She said schools of industry were also somewhat wanting.

Ms Mokgachane said Ikago Centre at Molepolole was currently the only facility offering such services locally. 

Established in 2001 with  capacity to house 100 male children in conflict with the law, the centre provided rehabilitation encompassing provision of psycho-social support, saleable skills, after-care and re-integration services, she explained. 

Sharing her experience,  University of Botswana’s department of law head Ms Elizabeth Macharia-Mokobi recalled a case where she sentenced a juvenile offender to attend the school of industry. 

Following sentencing, Ms Macharia-Mokobi said the child’s mother requested a meeting  during which  she wanted to understand how sending the offender to the school of industry was punishment. 

She said the encounter made her understand that in the eyes of society, a non-custodial sentence was not punishment enough.

 People must understand that the essence of sentencing was not to inflict harm or pain but rather to rehabilitate, said Ms Macharia-Mokobi. Ends