Access to justice for children in detention victims of violence: an EU mapping of practices and the development of an EU data collection and monitoring tool.

• In Event: Data acquiring, sharing and analysing for better Criminal Policy Making

Abstract

In all its forms, violence against children (VAC) continues to be widespread around the globe. For children deprived of their liberty, violence is a daily reality in many EU countries, but the lack of consistent monitoring, data collection, and public access to information contribute to their invisibility. Marginalisation and discrimination further compound the risks for these children, especially concerning their intersecting identities such as gender, sexual orientation and cultural background, among others. Ensuring the safety of children in detention is fundamentally linked to understanding the extent and the features of their experiences of violence, and this is only possible through the collection of robust and appropriate data.
The challenge of collecting data on VAC within the criminal justice context, and even more so in detention, is however broadly acknowledged by international research. Even when data is collected, the lack of appropriate disaggregation and the limited direct involvement of children in the processes of monitoring and reporting make the data collection incomplete and insufficient for a robust analysis that would aim at improving the system overall.
This research and paper – realised in the framework of the EU project “Data for Monitoring the Safety of Imprisoned Children”, led by Penal Reform International – contribute to addressing some of these gaps. It offers a mapping and assessment of monitoring and internal data collection practices on VAC in detention across EU countries, identifying trends, methods, core improvement needs and interesting practices. This research also provided the necessary foundation to develop an EU data collection tool and guidance on how to collect comprehensive, non-discriminatory and comparable data on VAC in detention facilities. This tool and guidance have the potential to help governments, administrators and, importantly, detention facilities across Europe to take a step toward better safeguarding children from violence during criminal justice detention.

Author

• Silvia Randazzo, KU Leuvebn