Children from state homes open gifts from the Jamaica America Friendship Association last December. - Peta-Gaye Clachar/Staff Photographer
Some six years after the Keating Report on Childrens' Home in Jamaica was done, information reaching The Gleaner suggests that some places of safety (POS) have ignored a recommendation calling for the separation of criminally charged children from others in the facilities.
The 2006 report, which documented the status of children in Jamaican POS and residential childcare facilities, recommended a physical separation of juveniles in need of care and protection from those deemed to be uncontrollable and those who have committed criminal offences.
However, child-right lobbyist and attorney-at-law Margarette Macaulay said information brought to her attention suggests that there is no separation of the groups of children at the Glenhope and Homestead places of safety on Maxfield Avenue and in Stony Hill, respectively.
Speaking with The Gleaner last week, Macaulay said that the separation was not just to comply with the Keating Report, but was a universally accepted standard.
"Children who are in conflict with the law should not be mixed with others. You shouldn't have them mixing with children who are in need of care and protection," Macaulay said. "Children should be protected, it's their right, a provision of the Child Care and Prevention Act. You don't want a child charged with murder mixing with another who may be depressed or was being abused."
Citing that the failure to separate the groups of children may come about as a result of space constraints in POS, she continued: "The last government had failed and this government is failing abysmally to make proper provision for children in need of care and protection and those in conflict with the law."
The attorney also spoke of situations where children in need of care and protection were sent to be kept at adult correctional facilities for the same reason.
In this regard, she said: "If there is no room for a child in need of care and protection, then you should call the family and make some sort of provision. Sending them to prisons is unacceptable."
Attempts to get a comment from the Department of Correctional Service were unsuccessful. Calls to the acting commissioner of corrections, June Jarrett, went to voicemail.
The Child Development Agency (CDA), however, has denied that the agency has ever sent any child to an adult correctional facility to be kept.
However, in relation to the failure to separate children with criminal charges from others at Glenhope and the Homestead places of safety, the agency said, "There is a challenge in separating the children."
In an emailed response to The Gleaner's questions, Rashida St. Juste, the CDA's communication manager, said: "Ideally, what would be needed to achieve separation is an expansion of existing places of safety and/or additional POS being built."
These tasks are not readily supported by the agency's budget allocation.
Nonetheless, the agency said it has recently embarked on a major rehabilitation project where places of safety, including Glenhope, Homestead Child Care Facility, Manning's Boys' Home, Granville Place of Safety, Blossom Gardens Child Care Facility, Marigold Child Care Facility and Copse Place of Safety in Hanover, stand to benefit. The project will cost some $35m and is expected to be completed later this year.
