Our safari adventure has finished and we are now delving fully into the international children’s rights program. Today we kicked off the program with a trip to the juvenile jail and the police station in Arusha. We had the opportunity to speak with James, one of three social workers who works at the juvenile jail, about how the jail operates. James gave our group a tour of the premises which gave us the opportunity to gain a little bit of insight into what a child may experience should they find themselves in this facility. We talked about the changes that the facility has made both structurally and fundamentally in terms of their goals for the children. This new mission, according to James, is to help the kids who come through here with rehabilitation rather than punishment.
There are five juvenile jails in the country which are located in Dar es Salaam, Moshi, Arusha (the facility that we visited), Tanga, and Mwana. The layout in each juvenile jail is the same and each has a fifty-child maximum capacity. Typically, there are low seasons and high seasons for the number of children who occupy the jail. When the school season ends, the juvenile jail will see an increase in the number of children who are sent there. According to James, the reason why there were only two children in the juvenile jail during our group’s visit is because school is currently still in session. When children are occupied with school, it keeps them from committing crimes that would cause them to be placed in the juvenile jail. They anticipate an influx of more children in the coming weeks. Professor Buske shared her insight on the facility from her past experience when she lived in Arusha many years ago when it was typical for 300-400 children to be packed into the juvenile jail. It does seem that some progress has been made in the country regarding the awareness of the importance of child welfare. However, the facility left a lot to be desired and it is clear that there is much more work to be done to improve how the juvenile jails care for these children who find themselves in the criminal system. It also became pretty evident the more we talked to James that there were a lot of gaps in his explanation about what measures the jail takes to ensure that the children there are receiving proper care.
Our next stop for the day was the local police station in Arusha. We were able to get an interview with the inspector who works in the department that investigates cases of child abuse and/or sexual assault cases. We also had the chance to speak with two plain clothes women police officers who work in the department as well. The walls inside the department building were painted with different positive images of children and adults to create a more pleasant atmosphere for children. We asked the inspector which kinds of cases were most commonly seen in his department, and he shared that they are usually domestic violence cases and victim reporting cases. The inspector went on to inform us that Arushatown consists of eighteen wats, aka wards, and that each individual wat has an inspector of police. He shared his belief that Arusha is safer now than in previous years as a result of this newer wat system. However, when our group asked the inspector for more concrete data about how many of the cases that come through the police department actually lead to convictions for the perpetrators the inspector was not as willing to speak as he had been when answering our previous questions. Instead, he claimed that they do not have that number and moved the conversation quickly along.
Another topic we discussed with the inspector was that of corporal punishment. In the past, school children have died as a result of serious injury obtained from corporal punishment in school. Now, “only” three hits are permitted by a school’s headmaster at any one instance for “misbehaving” children and a teacher must ask permission from their headmaster before each administration of corporal punishment. In theory, these three hits are only permitted to be on a child’s buttocks or on their hands to avoid more serious harm to the child although in practice I am sure a fly on the wall would see something much different. Overall, the biggest problem this department sees concerning child victims is a general fear of the legal system. Underreporting is a huge barrier for criminal justice here because oftentimes the offenders are important wage earners with a dependent family and there is a real fear for how that family will manage should a conviction come to fruition.
During both of our site visits, the social worker from the juvenile jail and the inspector from the police station avoided many of the questions our group asked when the answers would have shed a negative spotlight on the many issues facing the Tanzanian criminal system. Because of this, I am skeptical of much of what was told to our groups during both visits. I think it’s important to keep in mind that both the social worker and the inspector work for the Tanzanian government and may have ulterior motives when it comes to sharing what gaps exist that need to be filled to better protect the rights of Tanzanian children - we came into these facilities as a group of foreign law students, and they had no reason to trust us or to give us accurate information that could potentially make them look bad at doing their jobs. Moreover, the statistics regarding juvenile justice that come from the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) report in Tanzania tells a much different and much darker story than what our interviewers told us, and I am once again reminded of the overarching theme of this program which is to grapple with the theory of children’s rights versus what actually is the reality of children’s rights.
Finally, we piled back into our van and finished off the day by heading down to the local markets to pick out fabric to bring to the tailor later in the week to make fun dresses, skirts, shirts, napkins, tote bags, and more. Our friends, Ava and Salome, helped us translate with the shop owners to purchase our fabric and make sure we bought the right kind of fabric for whatever item we wanted to have made. Each of the different shop fronts we encountered were filled with bright colors and beautiful patterns and there was something different to catch your eye every which way that you looked. The streets were filled with chaotic traffic and bustling crowds of people ready to sell their wares and snag some good deals of their own. We all enjoyed the process of selecting our fabrics and contributing to the local economy.
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