Revealing Jamaica's soul

This is the first in a series of columns by Jamaicans For Justice which takes aim at children's rights issues in May, Child Month.

J.D.was 17 years old when he was arrested for robbery. He had been caught by two security guards who handed him over to the police at Half-Way Tree Police Station. He still remembers his escorting officers taunting him by threatening to kill him and dispose of his corpse.

At the station, J.D. attempted to explain that he had had no choice but to stage the robbery - that he had been forced at gunpoint by three men, but the officers refused to hear his explanation.

He was punched, kicked and beaten with batons. He was bound to a chair and shocked. He recalled seeing "twinkling stars, like when receiving a blow". He did not faint from the pain; they hit him in the face to prevent it. His hand was placed on part of a grille before an officer slammed an iron bar on it.

Soon enough, he confessed.

He was placed at a remand centre in Jamaica for one year. He now bears four scars of varying sizes on his scalp, arm, head and knee - all tokens from beatings doled out by the wardens.

It was not that he was badly behaved, all of the wards were beaten regularly. They were allowed to complain to the superintendent, but learned that it only resulted in worse punishment later, and so they remained silent.

Academically, he fell further behind his peers outside daily. There were no classes for children where he was held. He rarely saw his father, who only appeared during his court visits. Often, he felt like hanging himself.

'BAD PICKNEY'

J.D's story is, by itself, horrific enough. The fact that it is just one case of a pattern of the abuse and injustice regularly suffered by Jamaican children is even more disturbing. In Jamaica, children in conflict with the law suffer deeply from a misconception that they are inherently corrupt. They are written off as 'bad pickney', rejected by the same families and neighbours who might otherwise protect them.

This bias against children is so deeply entrenched that it even extends to the judicial system: 68 per cent of children in conflict with the law are sentenced with absolutely no legal representation. While the administration's superficially glossy campaigns proclaim the empowerment of youth, its actual wards - exploited children like J.D. - are abused and marginalised daily.

Occasionally, an ugly incident will push these realities into the spotlight. The Armadale fire of 2009 sent a badly needed shock throughout the Jamaican community after it revealed both the longstanding ill-treatment and disregard for the safety of its wards. The suicide of 16-year-old Vanessa Wint was widely decried as the result of state failure to implement even the most basic protective measures to safeguard young girls in these institutions.

What these isolated reactions fail to address is the fact that these incidents are symptomatic of a much wider problem - one that must be recognised before tragedies such as these are allowed to happen again.

Years of maltreatment

As it currently stands, a single childhood transgression can be a gateway to years of maltreatment and neglect. Our current system is geared towards confinement and punishment, with woefully little concern for support and rehabilitation. This short-sighted and damaging attitude has bred an environment of open hostility towards children in state care, and public apathy has allowed it to continue unchecked.

The current administration's behaviour suggests that observing children's rights are an inconvenience rather than a national obligation: government bodies casually dismiss genuine pleas for change while droves of boys like J.D. leave its facilities psychologically undersupported, educationally underprepared and entirely unable to handle the demands of outside society.

Nelson Mandela famously stated that "there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children". If this is true, what has been revealed about Jamaica is profoundly disturbing.

That our chosen administration has grown complacent enough to allow this to happen in plain view, both locally and internationally, is wholly contemptible. The public must begin to demand that stories like these end with them; as Elie Wiesel noted, silence only encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

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