Juveniles Are Not Criminals, They Make Mistakes: Tongi Child Development Centre Superintendent Emran Khan

Taking into account their age and mental development, children and juveniles are not kept in ordinary prisons with adult offenders, but in child development centres under special arrangements. The main purpose of these centres is not punishment, but to bring them back into the mainstream of society through correction, education, training and rehabilitation.

Md Emran Khan, superintendent of the Child Development Centre (Boys) in Tongi, Gazipur city, spoke on these issues. In the interview he said he does not want to label children and juveniles as criminals. In his words, they make mistakes, and sometimes circumstances lead them onto the wrong path.

Emran Khan said no single cause can be blamed for those mistakes. The issue must first be understood at the individual level, then the roles of family, society and institutions considered. Some structural problems in the overall way of life affect children's development.

He said a child must be taught from an early age how to communicate with people, how to choose friends and how to handle mental stress. The ability to distinguish good from bad and to make correct decisions must also be built in the family.

On the family's role, he said joint families once provided supervision and care for children. Grandparents and uncles and aunts would discipline them and advise them if they returned home late or misbehaved during study time. With more nuclear families, that supervision has weakened in many cases.

Economic reality means many parents must stay busy with work, creating gaps in care, moral education and guidance. In that situation many children lean heavily toward mobile phones and the internet, and without supervision can fall under negative influences.

Emran Khan said the safest environment for a child is family and society. If a child must be kept in a development centre, the effort is to return them to the family through timely rehabilitation, so education is not disrupted and ties with family and society are not broken.

On the centre's work, he said they work on children's education, health, behavioural development, training and rehabilitation. Each child's separate talents and abilities are identified and given scope to develop, with development plans made according to age and need.

He said their centre has a capacity of 300, with staffing and management run accordingly. Infrastructure and staffing need improvement to ensure proper services. The government has taken a project on this, and he hoped it would advance a solution to infrastructure problems. More centres at divisional level would also increase service opportunities.

He said in his working experience, about 45,000 children have already been returned to society after correction and rehabilitation through the centre. According to information given to him, about 97 percent of them are living normal lives after returning to society. Work is still needed on the roughly 3 percent who reoffend.

On the risk of keeping less offence-prone children with more offence-prone children, he said this is not the centre's problem alone. Family, educational institutions, society and relevant institutions must work together on prevention. Children must be kept away from drugs, ensured regular school attendance, made aware of safe internet use, and given age-appropriate supervision of mobile use.

Finally he said no child should be permanently labelled a criminal. It is everyone's responsibility to bring them back into the mainstream through education, care, training and rehabilitation. Coordinated action by family, educational institutions, society and the state would make juvenile crime prevention more effective.