Abstract
Drawing upon research with children in custody, this paper discusses the detention of children within the youth justice system and the prison system in Northern Ireland. It focuses on relatively recent legislative developments which demonstrate the failure of the State to incorporate children’s rights, provided for in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and additional international instruments relating to the area of juvenile justice and the deprivation of children’s liberty, into provisions governing the custodial disposal of children. The significance of this failure is highlighted by the thoughts and experiences of children detained in custody in Northern Ireland, which they revealed to the author during semi-structured interviews. Key areas of concern include the failure of the State to explicitly recognise children’s rights in legislation, to acknowledge that the child’s best interests are paramount, to remove children from the prison system and to separate them from adults, and provision for the imprisonment of children at risk of self-harm within the prison system. It is argued that these issues clearly demonstrate the State’s failure to guarantee children their rights and children’s experiences of custody reveal the serious consequences of this failure.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Unknown Host Publication |
| Editors | Dada Maglajlić |
| Place of Publication | Dubrovnik School of Social Work Theory and Practice |
| Publisher | Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9539976537, 9789539976536 |
| Publication status | Published (in print/issue) - 2010 |
| Event | the 20th Anniversary Conference the IUC Dubrovnik School of Social Work Theory and Practice, June 28 - July 4, 2009 - School of Social Work Theory and Practice, Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik Duration: 1 Jan 2010 → … |
Conference
| Conference | the 20th Anniversary Conference the IUC Dubrovnik School of Social Work Theory and Practice, June 28 - July 4, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Period | 1/01/10 → … |
Bibliographical note
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