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This report describes the main findings of the 30 contextual overviews produced and information collected in the phase of the study
to collect data on children’s involvement in criminal judicial
proceedings in the role of suspects/offenders, victims and witnesses.
The 30 contextual overviews describe the legislation, regulations, measures and policies in place as of 1 June 2012,
which determine the treatment of the child in criminal judicial
proceedings in each MS and judiciary (there are three judiciaries in the
UK and data have been collected for each).
The contextual overviews
also identify strengths and potential gaps.
The
overviews complement the statistics and data which have been gathered
for each MS, and which can be viewed on the study’s
www.childreninjudicialproceedings.eu.
Some of the findings of the
contextual overviews have also been used to populate the Masterlist of
indicators for children’s involvement in criminal proceedings that is
accessible on the on-line database.
The templates for the contextual
overviews were drawn up on the basis of the Council of Europe Guidelines
on child-friendly justice.
The report is structured in six parts.
Section 2
provides an overview of the scale of the child population involved in
criminal judicial proceedings, in order to put into context the
subsequent comparative analysis of the legal and policy frameworks in
the EU MS.
Section 3 describes key aspects of MS’
general approach to dealing with children in criminal proceedings,
including the existence or not of a youth justice system.
Section 4
examines the extent to which key safeguards are in place in the MS for
children’s involvement before and during criminal judicial proceedings,
while
Section 5 examines the extent to which key
safeguards are in place at MS level for children’s involvement after the
trial.
The final concluding section (Section 6) offers
a horizontal analysis of the key safeguards in place by role of the
child (suspects/ offenders, victims and witnesses) identifying safeguards
that are frequently provided across the EU and other safeguards that
are less common.
