HARIPUR, April 28: The coordinator of the Society for the Protection of Rights of the Child (SPARC), Peshawar, Mr Ijaz Khan, said that a juvenile offender should not be put in a lock-up or jail with adult prisoners.

He was speaking at a training workshop on the role of the police in the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) 2000 which was held here on Friday. The workshop was organised by the SPARC.

Mr Khan stressed the need for putting juvenile prisoners in borstals and trying them in juvenile courts.

He said that the state was responsible for constituting a panel of lawyers to provide legal support to juvenile offenders at the district level.

He briefed participants on the JJSO and its role in protecting the rights of a juvenile offender from the police station to the jail.

Referring to different sections of the JJSO, Mr Khan said that the police was bound to inform a juvenile offender’s parents or guardian and probation officer concerned after his/her arrest, and added that police was bound not to handcuff him/her after arrest.

He said that the JJSO had been implemented across the country but the shortage of funds was hampering its implementation in the Frontier province.

DPO Haripur Feroz Shah said that the police department was taking steps to deal with juvenile cases in accordance with the provisions of law.

He directed police officers to deal with juvenile offenders as special cases on humanitarian grounds as no one would want a child to get spoiled morally.

He directed police officers to ensure that a child offender was not put in lockup, and his/her case was put in court within the mandatory period of 24 hours.

The DPO distributed certificates among the participants of the workshop, which included SHOs and moharars of different police stations of Hairpur district.