The NGO Coalition for Children opposes the strengthening of Law 136-03
Santo Domingo.- The NGO Coalition for Children is calling for a redoubling of efforts aimed at preventing juvenile crime, instead of repression - as is being suggested from some quarters. She added that the main reason that children enter into conflict with the law is poverty, because it marginalizes them, deprives them of opportunities and makes them more vulnerable as a result of social inequalities. “By making the punishment tougher what happens is that you criminalise poverty, and attack the consequences of juvenile violence instead of the causes”, she stated.
Mrs. Ladrón de Guevara made these comments in the company of representatives of Ladrón gave the example of what has happened in countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which opted for an “iron fist” or “zero tolerance” policy to tackle youth violence, but failed in the attempt. She said that according to research by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), crimes committed by adolescents have increased in these three countries. “Police violence increased, prisons became overcrowded and unmanageable, and the relationship between the State and inhabitants of poor areas deteriorated spectacularly, leading to protests and unrest”, she said. Ladrón de Guevara said that before revising this law, the Recommendations of the United Nations Children’s Rights Committee had to be taken into account, by adopting the necessary measures for restructuring the judicial and administrative systems. The National Protection System for Children and Adolescents seeks to guarantee children and adolescent rights and promote their integrated development through coordinating inter-sectorial and inter-institutional policies and actions. Proposals for action 1. Develop integrated preventive programmes in the areas of education, professional training, psychological and health care, recreation and strengthening the family. 2. Provide those who have already committed crimes with the opportunity to return to society, to distance children and adolescents from an environment conducive to crime. These preventive programmes would be supported by public policies that also contribute empirical information for use in research into the causes that led adolescents to enter into conflict with the law. 3. Draw up annual plans for fighting violence through social policies that can be applied and evaluated, involving children, adolescents, NGOs, the academic world, and other actors like the business sector and churches. 4. Establish rules with guidelines for judges to interpret the law, always taking into account the Child’s Higher Interest, as set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). “If we want to reduce violence among minors, Dominican society has to improve in all these areas of weakness, which are the real causes of the problem”, declared the social activist.
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