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Juvenile justice reform: Children’s rights and responsibilities versus crime control

Skelton, Ann
June 4, 2015

Source: (1998) Paper presented at the Children’s Rights in a Transitional Society conference. Centre for Child Law, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 30 October.

In her paper Skelton considers three major themes that have influenced the process of juvenile justice reform in South Africa: children’s rights; restorative justice; and political will. In some detail she discusses children’s rights within a framework of national and international human rights standards; restorative justice in light of national and international contexts, with particular reference to juvenile justice; and political commitments in the first years of post-apartheid South Africa to effect juvenile justice reform. With all of this in mind, she asks whether these three influences are giving way to the imperative of crime control in South Africa. In other words, can juvenile justice be pursued with a focus on children’s rights and restorative justice, or will it be pursued with a focus on crime control?

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