10 Reflections: Enablers and Barriers to Reform
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Ursula Kilkelly
Abstract
This final chapter aims to draw together the book’s analysis of the experience of implementing children’s rights in detention. To recap, Chapter 1 explained the imperative for a children’s rights approach to detention and, drawing on a range of international instruments including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), proposed an integrated model of child detention that advances children’s rights. Under this rights-based model, child detention must be child-centred and fulfil the child’s rights to provision, protection, participation, preparation and partnership. As Chapter 2 illustrated, children’s rights are routinely breached and ignored in detention around the world, although proposals for more radical, rights-based reforms are beginning to emerge. Many of the issues highlighted internationally were concerns in Ireland as well – use of adult prisons, inadequate standards of care, high levels of restrictive practices, insufficient focus on the child’s complex needs and a marginalization of children within the process – when the commitment was set out in law and policy to establish a specialist, child-centred model for all children under 18 years of age in detention. Ireland’s experience is thus highly relevant to the global context and Chapters 3 to 9 explored how the commitment to advance a children’s rights approach to detention has been implemented in Oberstown. It began in Chapter 3 by tracing changes to law and policy that followed Ireland’s ratification of the CRC in 1992, before focusing, in Chapter 4, on the specific requirement, set by government policy, to establish a child-centred model of detention for all children under 18 years of age. These chapters provided the foundation for the more in-depth analysis that followed.
Abstract
This final chapter aims to draw together the book’s analysis of the experience of implementing children’s rights in detention. To recap, Chapter 1 explained the imperative for a children’s rights approach to detention and, drawing on a range of international instruments including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), proposed an integrated model of child detention that advances children’s rights. Under this rights-based model, child detention must be child-centred and fulfil the child’s rights to provision, protection, participation, preparation and partnership. As Chapter 2 illustrated, children’s rights are routinely breached and ignored in detention around the world, although proposals for more radical, rights-based reforms are beginning to emerge. Many of the issues highlighted internationally were concerns in Ireland as well – use of adult prisons, inadequate standards of care, high levels of restrictive practices, insufficient focus on the child’s complex needs and a marginalization of children within the process – when the commitment was set out in law and policy to establish a specialist, child-centred model for all children under 18 years of age in detention. Ireland’s experience is thus highly relevant to the global context and Chapters 3 to 9 explored how the commitment to advance a children’s rights approach to detention has been implemented in Oberstown. It began in Chapter 3 by tracing changes to law and policy that followed Ireland’s ratification of the CRC in 1992, before focusing, in Chapter 4, on the specific requirement, set by government policy, to establish a child-centred model of detention for all children under 18 years of age. These chapters provided the foundation for the more in-depth analysis that followed.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of Cases and Instruments iv
- List of Figures vi
- About the Authors vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Children’s Rights in Detention 5
- An International Perspective 20
- Irish Youth Justice Law and Policy 35
- Introducing Child Detention in Ireland 50
- Oberstown and the Process of Change 68
- Implementing Children’s Rights in Detention 87
- Children’s Rights to Protection from Harm 105
- Staff Wellbeing and Communication 122
- International and National Influences and Advocacy 139
- Reflections: Enablers and Barriers to Reform 155
- Afterword 177
- References 180
- Index 203
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of Cases and Instruments iv
- List of Figures vi
- About the Authors vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Children’s Rights in Detention 5
- An International Perspective 20
- Irish Youth Justice Law and Policy 35
- Introducing Child Detention in Ireland 50
- Oberstown and the Process of Change 68
- Implementing Children’s Rights in Detention 87
- Children’s Rights to Protection from Harm 105
- Staff Wellbeing and Communication 122
- International and National Influences and Advocacy 139
- Reflections: Enablers and Barriers to Reform 155
- Afterword 177
- References 180
- Index 203
