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Anhang 2.5: Recommendation No. R (1987) 20
RECOMMENDATION No. R (87) 20 OF THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS TO MEMBER
STATES ON SOCIAL REACTIONS TO JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
(Adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 17 September 1987 at the 410th meeting of the Ministers‘ Deputies)
The Committee of Ministers, under the terms of Article 15.b of the Statute of the Council of
Europe,
Considering that young people are developing beings and in consequence all measures taken in
their respect should have an educational character;
Considering that social reactions to juvenile delinquency should take account of the personality
and speci? c needs of minors and that the latter need specialised interventions and, where appropriate, specialised treatment based in particular on the principles embodied in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child; Convinced that the penal system for minors should
continue to be characterised by its objective of education and social integration and that it
should as far as possible abolish imprisonment for minors;
Considering that measures in respect of minors should preferably be implemented in their natural environment and should involve the community, in particular at local level; Convinced that
minors must be afforded the same procedural guarantees as adults;
Taking account of earlier work by the Council of Europe in the ? eld of juvenile delinquency and
in particular of Resolution (78) 62 on juvenile delinquency and social change and the conclusions of the 14th Criminological Research Conference on „Prevention of juvenile delinquency:
the role of institutions of socialisation in a changing society“;
Having regard to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules),
Recommends the governments of member states to review, if necessary, their legislation and
practice with a view:
I. Prevention
1. to undertaking or continuing particular efforts for the prevention of juvenile maladjustment
and delinquency, in particular:
a. by implementing a comprehensive policy promoting the social integration of young people;
b. by providing special assistance and the introduction of specialised programmes, on an experimental basis, in schools or in young peoples‘ or sports‘ organisations for the better integration
of young people who are experiencing serious dif? culties in this ? eld;
c. by taking technical and situational measures to reduce the opportunities offered to young people to commit offences;
II. Diversion – mediation
2. to encouraging the development of diversion and mediation procedures at public prosecutor
level (discontinuation of proceedings) or at police level, in countries where the police has prosecuting functions, in order to prevent minors from entering into the criminal justice system and
suffering the ensuing consequences; to associating Child Protection Boards or services to the
application of these procedures;
3. to taking the necessary measures to ensure that in such procedures:
- the consent of the minor to the measures on which the diversion is conditional and, if necessary, the co-operation of his family are secured;
347
- appropriate attention is paid to the rights and interests of the minor as well as to those of the
victim;
III. Proceedings against minors
4. to ensuring that minors are tried more rapidly, avoiding undue delay, so as to ensure effective
educational action;
5. to avoiding committing minors to adult courts, where juvenile courts exist;
6. to avoiding, as far as possible, minors being kept in police custody and, in any case, encouraging the prosecuting authorities to supervise the conditions of such custody;
7. to excluding the remand in custody of minors, apart from exceptional cases of very serious
offences committed by older minors; in these cases, restricting the length of remand in custody
and keeping minors apart from adults; arranging for decisions of this type to be, in principle,
ordered after consultation with a welfare department on alternative proposals;
8. to reinforcing the legal position of minors throughout the proceedings, including the police
investigation, by recognising, inter alia:
- the presumption of innocence;
- the right to the assistance of a counsel who may, if necessary, be of? cially appointed and paid
by the state;
- the right to the presence of parents or of another legal representative who should be informed
from the beginning of the proceedings;
- the right of minors to call, interrogate and confront witnesses;
- the possibility for minors to ask for a second expert opinion or any other equivalent investigative measure;
- the right of minors to speak and, if necessary, to give an opinion on the measures envisaged
for them;
- the right to appeal;
- the right to apply for a review of the measures ordered;
- the right of juveniles to respect for their private lives;
9. to encouraging arrangements for all the persons concerned at various stages of the proceedings (police, counsel, prosecutors, judges, social workers) to receive specialised training on the
law relating to minors and juvenile delinquency;
10. to ensuring that the entries of decisions relating to minors in the police records are treated
as con? dential and only communicated to the judicial authorities or equivalent authorities and
that these entries are not used after the persons concerned come of age, except on compelling
grounds provided for in national law;
IV. Interventions
11. to ensuring that interventions in respect of juvenile delinquents are sought preferably in the
minors‘ natural environment, respect their right to education and their personality and foster
their personal development;
12. to providing that intervention is of a determined length and that only the judicial authorities
or equivalent administrative authorities may ? x it, and that the same authorities may terminate
the intervention earlier than originally provided;
13. when residential care is essential:
- to diversifying the forms of residential care in order to provide the one most suited to the
minor‘s age, dif? culties and background (host families, homes);
- to establishing small-scale educational institutions integrated into their social, economic and
cultural environment;
- to providing that the minor‘s personal freedom shall be restricted as little as possible and that
the way in which this is done is decided under judicial control;
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- in all forms of custodial education, to fostering, where possible, the minor‘s relations with his
family:
- avoiding custody in places which are too distant or inaccessible;
- maintaining contact between the place of custody and the family;
14. with the aim of gradually abandoning recourse to detention and increasing the number of
alternative measures, to giving preference to those which allow greater opportunities for social
integration through education, vocational training as well as through the use of leisure or other
activities;
15. among such measures, to paying particular attention to those which:
- involve probationary supervision and assistance;
- are intended to cope with the persistence of delinquent behaviour in the minor by improving
his capacities for social adjustment by means of intensive educational action (including „intensive intermediary treatment“);
- entail reparation for the damage caused by the criminal activity of the minor;
- entail community work suited to the minor‘s age and educational needs;
16. in cases where, under national legislation, a custodial sentence cannot be avoided:
- to establishing a scale of sentences suited to the condition of minors, and to introducing more
favourable conditions for the serving of sentences than those which the law lays down for
adults, in particular as regards the obtaining of semi-liberty and early release, as well as granting
and revocation of suspended sentence;
- to requiring the courts to give reasons for their prison sentences;
- to separating minors from adults or, where in exceptional cases integration is preferred for
treatment reasons, to protecting minors from harmful in? uence from adults;
- to providing both education and vocational training for young prisoners, preferably in conjunction with the community, or any other measure which may assist reinsertion in society;
- to providing educational support after release and possible assistance for the social rehabilitation of the minors;
17. to reviewing, if necessary, their legislation on young adult delinquents, so that the relevant
courts also have the opportunity of passing sentences which are educational in nature and foster
social integration, regard being had for the personalities of the offenders;
V. Research
18. to promoting and encouraging comparative research in the ? eld of juvenile delinquency so
as to provide a basis for policy in this area, laying emphasis on the study of:
- prevention measures;
- the relationship between the police and young people;
- the in? uence of new crime policies on the functioning of legal systems concerned with minors;
- specialised training for everyone working in this ? eld;
- comparative features of juvenile delinquency and young adult delinquency, as well as reeducation and social integration measures suitable for these age-groups;
- alternatives to deprivation of liberty;
- community involvement in the care of young delinquents;
- the relationship between demographic factors and the labour market on the one hand and juvenile delinquency on the other;
- the role of the mass media in the ? eld of delinquency and reactions to delinquency;
- institutions such as a youth ombudsman or complaints board for the protection of young
people‘s rights;
- measures and procedures of reconciliation between young offenders and their victims.
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Anhang 2.6: Recommendation No. R (1988) 6
RECOMMENDATION No. R (88) 6 OF THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS TO MEMBER
STATES ON SOCIAL REACTIONS TO JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AMONG YOUNG
PEOPLE COMING FROM MIGRANT FAMILIES
(Adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 18 April 1988 at the 416th meeting of the Ministers‘
Deputies)
The Committee of Ministers, under the terms of Article 15.b of the Statute of the Council of
Europe,
Drawing attention to the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights;
Having regard to the multicultural and multiracial nature of most European societies today and
the need for Council of Europe member states to make allowance for this when framing their
policies;
Considering the need for each state to reduce, as much as possible, differences existing between
nationals and non-nationals in the participation in the social life of the country of residence;
Considering that any policy on juvenile delinquency necessarily entails taking measures to facilitatethe social integration of young people in dif? culty;
Considering that, of these young people, those coming from migrant families and in particular
second-generation migrants deserve special attention;
Considering the need to prevent delinquent behaviour among the latter by giving them equal
opportunities for self-ful? lment with the young among the indigenous population and enabling
them to integrate themselves fully into the society of the country of residence;
Considering that special arrangements should be made to ensure that, when these young people
come into contact with the system of justice for minors, the action taken is likely to foster their
social integration;
Taking into account the work of the European Committee on Crime Problems in the sphere of
juvenile delinquency and crime among migrants, namely: Resolution (75) 3 on the legal and
administrative aspects of criminality among migrant workers, Resolution (78) 62 on juvenile
delinquency and social change, Recommendation No. R (84) 12 concerning foreign prisoners
and Recommendation No. R (87) 20 on social reactions to juvenile delinquency,
Recommends the governments of member states to take the following measures in legislation
and practice in order to avoid any discriminatory treatment of young people coming from migrant families in the juvenile justice system and within the policy of social integration of youth
and to help those who have displayed delinquent conduct to derive the maximum bene? t from
the measures available under that system:
I. Prevention
1. To promote their access to all available institutions and social resources in order to enable
them to acquire a social status equivalent to that of other young people; to this end, to give
young migrants, in accordance with arrangements laid down in the legislation, the possibility of
acquiring the nationality of the country of residence;
2. To promote their participation in all facilities for young people: youth clubs and associations,
sports clubs and social services; in this framework, encourage organisations aiming at conserving the cultural heritage of these groups;
3. To offer adequate aid and assistance to these young people and their families when they are
in social and family crisis situations;
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References
Zusammenfassung
Die Jugendstrafrechtssysteme in Europa sind sehr verschieden. Anhand des Rechtsvergleichs und der Rechtsentwicklung in der EU und mittels der Völkerrechtsinstrumente zur Jugendgerichtsbarkeit formuliert der Autor Elementarteile eines Europäischen Jugendstrafrechts. Behandelt werden:
• Konzeption und Zielsetzung
• Alter und Prüfung der Strafbarkeit
• der Umgang mit jungerwachsenen Tätern
• Diversion und Entkriminalisierung
• der Sanktionskatalog nebst Freiheitsentzug
Neben einer Analyse von Trends in der Jugendkriminalität und kriminologischer Erklärungsansätze werden die Wünschbarkeit und Zweckmäßigkeit einer gemeineuropäischen Rahmenstrategie im Jugendstrafrecht erörtert sowie Harmonisierungswege für die europäische Integration aufgezeigt.
Die Arbeit bündelt verstreute Reformansätze auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene zu einem neuen Anlauf. Sie hilft, eine zeitgemäße und angemessene Reaktion auf die verschiedenen Formen der Jugenddelinquenz zu erarbeiten. Sie richtet sich an Wissenschaftler, Politiker und Praktiker im Jugendrecht.
Der Autor war Doktorand und Mitarbeiter an der Forschungsstelle für Jugendstrafrecht und Kriminalprävention der Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel.