PESHAWAR, Dec 7: Speakers at a workshop have called upon police officials not to handcuff juvenile offenders. Organized by the Society for Protection of Rights of the Child (Sparc) in collaboration with the Child Rights Committee (CRC), the workshop on “Role of police under Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000” was held at the Charsadda Press Club on Wednesday. It was attended by SHOs, Moharrars, probation officer, media people and NGO activists.

Speaking on the occasion, CRC coordinator Sartaj Khan said that his organisation’s lawyers were always ready to extend free legal assistance to children facing legal cases.

Sparc’s programme coordinator Jawadullah said that there was no uniform juvenile justice system in the country and Frontier and Balochistan the provinces did not have a single legislation regarding children and particularly those who came into conflict with the law.

Despite promulgation of the JJSO in 2000, the officials concerned still lacked awareness about it and cases involving juvenile offenders were never brought into notice of the probation officers by police, he deplored.

He briefed the participants about the United Nations Convention of Rights of the Child and salient features of the JJSO 2000, such as its sections prohibiting use of handcuffs for juveniles and requiring that probation officers and parents or guardians of juvenile offenders be informed about their arrest and court presentation.

Furthermore, he said, the JJSO 2000 also called for production of juvenile offenders in juvenile courts within 24 hours of their arrest and their release, under certain circumstances, on personal surety.

The participating police officers admitted that they were not aware of the law and the need to inform the probation officers about the arrest of a juvenile offender. They requested for arranging such kind of activities at police station level to make police personnel aware of rules to be followed in cases involving juveniles.

Sparc provided a list of officially notified panel of lawyers to the participants so that they can contact them in case a juvenile offender or his family cannot afford to hire legal consultant.