St. Vincent forging ahead with Juvenile Justice Reform

St. Vincent and the Grenadines – Speaking at the 2013 St. Vincent and the Grenadines Secondary Schools Rally last Thursday at the Victoria Park, Minister for Youth Affairs, National Mobilisation and Social Development Frederick Stephenson said, “our youth will prosper and have second chance opportunities in life.”

This according to the Minister as St. Vincent and the Grenadines forges ahead with Juvenile Justice Reform, was made possible “through the Juvenile Justice Reform Project funded by the US AID Funding Agency, coordinated by the OECS and implemented by the Ministry of National Mobilisation and Social Development in collaboration with the national stakeholders’ project steering committee.”

Juvenile Justice Reform has been explored and implemented internationally, with St. Vincent and the Grenadines embraced the need for reform in June 2012.

The pillars of the Juvenile Justice Reform Project are Legislative Reform, Capacity Building, Modernization of Programmes and Civil Society Strengthening.

Since its inception in 2012 St. Vincent and the Grenadines have received a total of $100,000 US worth of equipment under the first phase of the small grant facility to increase the capacity of state and non-state organizations associated with the juvenile justice sector.

The first national consultation of juvenile reform was successfully executed on January 10, 2013. During that consultation, participants developed a national coordinating strategy, communication strategy, and juvenile justice information system and court diversion programme.

I am also very proud to state that next Tuesday and Wednesday my Ministry will host a risk assessment for juveniles’ workshop at Sunset Shores Hotel Conference room. This workshop will be for social workers, caseworkers and counselors and will be facilitated by an Associate Professor from the University of Massachusetts.

Participants will be trained to identify risks in juveniles and to determine the level and types of programmes by developing an assessment tool.

Meanwhile on Thursday October 31st and November 1st 2013, respectively, the first ever National Juvenile Justice Training Conference at the Methodist Church Hall.

This will be for policy makers and practitioners in the sector, exposing them to a lecture series on available models and approaches of reform. The participants of this conference will also include representatives from the other OECS Member States, The OECS Secretariat, USAID, UNICEF, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States of America.

Additionally a number of community training camps have been proposed for the rest of 2013 through September 2014, targeting parents and youth in these communities to develop tool kits for parents to improve their roles and responsibilities in identifying and treating deviant behavior. Training for practitioners to be certified in the fields of therapy, risk assessments, care and protection of victims and youth in conflict with the law becomes top priority.

However, Minister Stephenson sounded a note of caution. “all these achievements will be short lived if we fail to install the appropriate systems to compliment these programme interventions, hence the need to establish technical cooperation through consultants with the relevant expertise to assist us in the development of a comprehensive and cohesive systemic model to sustain the reform process.”

He added that “Once this reform process is implemented our sector can be able to see improvements in victims support, youth rehabilitation, family reintegration and behavior modification.” (Robertson S. Henry/robertsons.henry@gmail.com)