Stop stigmatizing juvenile offenders – Ghanaians advised

The Executive Director of Child Research and Resource Centre (CRRECENT), Susan Sabaa has admonished all Ghanaians to desist from stigmatizing juvenile offenders who are reintegrated into the society.

According to her, stigmatizing these young ones only makes them feel unaccepted and pushes them into committing more serious crimes.

“Those that go ahead to do real hard core crime, most of them have had juvenile offending records” she asserted.

Madam Sabaa added that her outfit is collaborating and advocating for rehabilitation centers where juvenile offenders will be sent after serving their term and they would be kept, monitored, trained before gradually integrating them into the society.

“The released juveniles will be kept for three to six months where they will be fed with more doses of what they learnt here with more psycho-social counseling, top up of the skills that they learnt, a lot of prayers and even linking them to job opportunities so that the child is stable before finally been integrated into the society” she added.

The numbers in the juvenile correctional center, according to her, keeps increasing by the year mostly because those realized are not properly integrated into the society.

Sabaa was speaking at the opening ceremony of a five-day capacity building training for 20 selected officers themed “The juvenile offender Management and Criminogenic behavior change Treatment” in Accra on Monday, April 16, 2018.