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The Nigerian Correctional Service, NCS, has warned against detaining children below 18 years alongside adult offenders, saying such practice could have a negative impact on their rehabilitation.
Legal Officer with the NCS, Miss Nanchin Kuntap, gave the warning in Jos while representing the Commander of the Plateau State Command, Mr James Padu, at a human rights training organised by the Mantle of Patriotism Advancement Initiative, MPAI, in partnership with Amnesty International and Rotary Club of Jos Metro.
Kuntap said the NCS had mechanisms in place to ensure that children in conflict with the law were not admitted into conventional correctional centres.
“You would hardly find a child, and who is a child is anybody below 18 years, in the conventional correctional institutions. Even when there are attempts by other criminal justice actors to bring in children, we vehemently refuse,” she said.
She explained that the NCS Act prohibits children from being kept in conventional correctional institutions, stressing that separating them from adult offenders was essential to their proper rehabilitation.
According to her, children in conflict with the law should be handled through appropriate juvenile or remand institutions, depending on the circumstances of their cases.
Kuntap further stressed that the best interest of the child must remain central to the justice system, warning that exposing children to adult offenders could be detrimental to their development.
“Children are not in any way to be brought into custodial institutions with adults because that has a very devastating and detrimental effect on the rehabilitation of a child,” she said.
She also advocated the use of alternatives to incarceration in dealing with children who come in conflict with the law.
“The Child Rights Law also entails that incarceration should be used as the last option for a child who has come in conflict with the justice system,” Kuntap said.
She clarified that juvenile and remand homes in Plateau State are managed by the state government through the Ministry of Women Affairs, while the NCS operates under the Federal Government.
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