The United Nations top investigator on torture has delivered a scathing criticism of juvenile justice practices common in the United States, including routine detention of youths, solitary confinement and sentences of life without parole for children.
In a presentation of his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur Juan E. MÉndez called on countries to rely on alternatives to detention, which he said should be a “last resort” for “exceptional cases” for the shortest possible period of time when in the “best interest of the child.”
“The detention of children is inextricably linked — in fact, if not in law — with the ill-treatment of children, owing to the particularly vulnerable situation in which they have been placed that exposes them to numerous types of risk,” MÉndez told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The report said children deprived of liberty are at “heightened risk of violence, abuse and acts of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
[For more of this story, written by Gary Gately, go to http://jjie.org/un-report-faul...nile-justice/108501/]
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