Overview: Helping the system recognise the adult hand in child crime - the SA pilot project

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Social workers, police officers and justice officials have begun to recognise and respond to a significant problem that lies behind many of South Africa’s child offenders: the involvement of adults in crimes committed by young people.

Not only are officials – from probation officers to magistrates – recognising that children may be both perpetrators and victims in the world of crime, but they are using diversion and alternative sentences, where appropriate, and addressing the challenge of reintegration of child offenders more seriously.

Behind this new approach is the Action Programme on Children Used by Adults to Commit Crime (CUBAC), which was initiated by the regional Programme Towards the Elimination of Worst Forms of Child Labour (TECL) and managed by the Children’s Rights Project of the Community Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape.

The Action Programme on CUBAC focused on two high crime areas of major cities: Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town and Mamelodi in Tshwane (previously known as Pretoria). The Children’s Rights Project has several important partner organisations in both locations.

The programme aims:

• To prevent adult exploitation of children for purposes of committing crime.
• To assist children involved in criminal activity to withdraw from such situations.
• To ensure that child offenders are appropriately treated in the justice system.
• To enable children who have offended to return to their families and communities and resume education.

The first challenge that the programme faced was that there was a dearth of concrete information on the extent to which children committed crime. So a situation analysis was undertaken as a basis for later interventions. This analysis was later supplemented by a study on children’s views on their use by adults to commit crime and a baseline study in four areas: Pretoria and Westbury in Gauteng and Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha in Western Cape.

Which children become involved in CUBAC?

The studies suggested that children from impoverished backgrounds are vulnerable to CUBAC. These vulnerable children often come from single-parent families and households hit by joblessness. Drug abuse is also a strong feature among children who are being used by adults to undertake crime.

CUBAC, as one of the worst forms of child labour, refers to the involvement of children in offences dealt with by the criminal justice system, not in minor infringements of the law, such as transgressions of municipal by-laws. CUBAC covers offences such as housebreaking, robbery, vehicle hijacking, drug sale and, even, crimes of violence. In the South African context, economic crimes predominate among young offenders.

What do children have to say about CUBAC?

 A total of 541 children in schools and secure care centres in Gauteng and the Western Cape participated in the study through 44 focus group discussions. This is what they said about what influenced children to become involved in crime:

• Factors at home – ranging from poverty to family relationships and the parenting and care of children – contributed to children becoming involved in crime.
• Adults sometimes influenced the involvement of children in crime, either directly or indirectly, in ways that ranged from encouragement to recruitment and coercion.
• Adults sometimes encouraged a drug habit in the child and then used this to manipulate the child’s involvement in crime.

How did the justice system respond to CUBAC?

At the outset of the project there was no identified procedure in the criminal justice system for following up reports that adults were using children to commit crime.

• Police standing orders did not require any specific course of action.
• Adults behind the crimes committed by children were seldom prosecuted.
• Probation officers did not seem to have any mechanism to take matters further.
• Children subjected to CUBAC were treated like any other young offender.
• Children subjected to CUBAC were seldom asked to testify in the rare cases where adult perpetrators were put in the dock.

Beginning to make a difference

Over a period of about 12 months – February 2006 to February 2007 - the Action Programme has established some new ways of working with children used by adults to commit crime in Mitchell’s Plain and Mamelodi. It has also been able to produce materials and tools that are in use in the project areas but equally useful for all other areas. Thirdly, it has built capacity, in communities and in government, to respond both to the threat and the reality of children of children being drawn into crime through the actions of adults.

Prevention

Using the research about what makes children vulnerable to adult exploitation for criminal purposes, the Action Programme developed a prevention programme that can be included in the life orientation curriculum in schools. It also developed an awareness raising session for community members – parents, children and other interested people – and trained facilitators to run sessions in the target communities.

Reorienting the child justice system

Victims of CUBAC who have been arrested and prosecuted are increasingly being identified as victims of adult criminals as well as perpetrators of crime. This means that their need for assistance as well as protection from the adults behind the crime are addressed.

Various tools have been developed to assist police, prosecutors and probation officers to recognize instances of CUBAC and to investigate and prosecute the adult perpetrators. Officials in the project sites have been trained to use the tools and follow the processes prescribed.

One of the processes to be considered when CUBAC is encountered is the diversion of the child from the criminal justice system into an alternative programme. Several non-governmental organisations are involved in developing these alternative models of justice. A Diversion Programme Manual has been developed on the basis of experience gained in the project.

Rehabilitation and reintegration

In the pilot areas, community workers attached to non-governmental organisations are assigned as mentors to children who have passed through diversion programmes in order to provide them with ongoing support and track their progress.

Some ground has been gained in the critically important area of continuing the education of children who have been involved in crime. Children are assisted to re-enter mainstream education or access alternative educational programmes. The national Department of Education has independently recognised the need to provide opportunities for out of school youth – and so Action Programme personnel and education officials are working together to produce solutions for CUBAC victims across the country.

More generally, by the end of the project, key institutions, including the Departments of Justice, Social Development and Education, had been strengthened to plan and deliver services and interventions to combat CUBAC. Several important non-governmental organisations had also gained critical experience in relation to this specific social problem.

Furthermore CUBAC had either been placed on the agenda of child justice coordinating committees at national, provincial and local level or will soon feature among their priorities.