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[7 December 2007] - A 12-year-old boy has become one of Namibia's youngest prison inmates - if not the youngest - after he was convicted of housebreaking and theft at Karasburg.
The boy was sentenced to six months' imprisonment without the option of a fine or alternative sentence.
He is now being kept at Hardap Prison, where he was transferred last week after being kept in custody at Keetmanshoop since sentencing. This is despite a court order that he should serve his sentence at the Elizabeth Nepembe Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre near Rundu, almost 1 400 kilometres from his home and his family.
Sources working on juvenile justice issues have over the past week expressed concern over the boy's situation in a prison that, they say, is not equipped to deal with a juvenile prisoner.
Sources who have seen the boy say he looks even younger than his age - he is reported to be able to pass for an eight or nine-year-old child.
SEVERE, The Namibian Prison Service, has so far not commented.
The boy was 11 years old when he was arrested and charged with housebreaking with intent to steal and theft in connection with a burglary at a shop at Karasburg in August.
Two older suspects were also accused of involvement in the burglary.
The boy's trial ended in the Karasburg Magistrate's Court on October 19, when he was sentenced to an unusually severe sentence for a child his age: six months' imprisonment at Elizabeth Nepembe Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre, without any option for paying an alternative fine and with no part of the sentence suspended.
His case has since been sent to the High Court on review.
High Court staff indicated yesterday that the case was still in the hands of a reviewing Judge.
Difficult family backgound
A brief pre-sentence report, written by a Karas Region school counsellor, was given to the Magistrate before the sentencing.
It indicates that the boy is a child with serious behavioural problems and a difficult family background.
In the report, the school counsellor recommended that the boy be sent to Elizabeth Nepembe Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre.
She reported that the boy's father, who is disabled, cannot provide proper care to his son.
While he was attending school, the boy was doing so "on his own conditions," the counsellor reported.
She added that at the age of eleven the boy was still in Grade 2, and still could not read.
The boy has been staying in a school hostel.
In a report from the school attended by the boy it was said his mother had died.
The school in addition reported that the boy was "more on the street" than at school, and claimed that he "takes part in everything - smoking, drugs, alcohol abuse, burglaries".
"He has at times tried to commit suicide - at home and also at the hostel," it was stated.
This is not an isolated case.
In early March this year, the appeal court set aside a six-month prison term that had been imposed on two San girls, aged 17 and 15, after they pleaded guilty to a charge of housebreaking with intent to steal and theft.
In a review judgement on that case, Judge Sylvester Mainga stated that an underlying principle in accepted guidelines on the sentencing of young offenders "is that child offenders should not be detained except if the detention is a measure of last resort, in which case the child may be detained only for the shortest appropriate period of time".
Judge Mainga also said: "When imposing sentence on a child, the child's best interest is of paramount importance."
He remarked that in the two San girls' case, a prison sentence was inappropriate.
Further information
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Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: 'No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time'
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More information on children in conflict with the law
pdf: http://www.namibian.com.na/2007/December/national/07D3A0AF71.html