POLICE ADMINISTRATION ADOPTING CHILD-FRIENDLY STRATEGIES
The
Police administration is re-strategizing its operations to become more
child-friendly in its pursuit of issues directly affecting minors by creating
the needed environment for such members of the society to interact with police
personnel.
To this end, series of training workshops are being organized to
re-orient police officers to better appreciate the legalities in handling
issues involving children. Two hundred and 50 police personnel in Ashanti
region have undergone six-day capacity enhancing training course at the
regional Police training school where they were taken through carefully
selected topics to enable them to tactfully handle cases in which children who
come into conflict with the law or serving as witnesses in criminal cases
appear before them.
The participants went through topics such as the Standard
Procedure for Handling Children, privacy and confidentiality of the child,
detention of the child as the last resort, the use of diversion as a principle
in interviewing the child as well as some of the legal frameworks relating to
children’s welfare in Ghana.
The Coordinator for the training programme,
Superintendent Benjamin Dokurugu, who is also the immediate past Ashanti
Regional Commander of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the
Ghana Police Service, DOVVSU, explained that the orientation programme is in line with
the strides being made by the Police administration to conform to the United
Nations’ Convention on the Right of the Child to which Ghana is a signatory,
while bringing them up to date on national laws that seek to protect the right
of the child.
Superintendent Dokurugu emphasized that after going through the
training, the police personnel must protect the best interest of minors who
come into direct contact with them in the performance of their official duties
so as to ensure that minors who come into conflict with the law or serve as
witnesses in cases do not suffer any immediate or future negative consequences.
'We must consider the best interest of the child. We must uphold the right of the child every time. We must adopt child-friendly methods in handling the child....detention of the child should be the last resort', Superintendent Dokurugu insisted.
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