Τρίτη 9 Σεπτεμβρίου 2014

Summary of contextual overviews on children’s involvement in criminal judicial proceedings in the 28 Member States of the European Union

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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.