Practical conclusions and suggestions

105 and the process of development of Failure Reduction Strategy, the specialists admitted that a

support system is significantly needed for the practitioners – professionals who work with youth from risk groups. The specialists pointed out that trainings are needed about prevention issues for the specialists in regions, as well as the system to prevent burn-out. Although the document is called a Strategy, its strategic meaning was felt more by regional specialists. Failure Reduction Strategy included every single problem, failure or obstacle that was identified by a specialist in a region in his/her professional work, as well as its possible solution. The solution for a failure could be provided by any specialist from the same or other region or, in case of a need, a special-ist from a relevant state adminspecial-istrative institution or the local government, who was involved in solving the particular issue. For instance, one of the issues/statements which was included in the Strategy as an obstacle for the work – “I have an impression that the work with children from risk groups involves many institutions in Latvia, but the number of institutions, that do not know clearly their competences, is too big.” At the same time, the Strategy included problems from everyday work – most of them are discussed in this research. It is planned that FRS will be com-pleted and finished at the end of this project after the publishing of this research and will remain in hand of the three local governments which are involved in the project.

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ourselves and our children healthy, intellectual and happy, instead of ill, ignorant and detained, we must come to a common conclusion that liability, first of all, is a responsible and honest ac-tion, not an application of sanctions, set out in the law.

• To prevent the criminalization of children and youth, it is necessary to reduce to the minimum the repressive intervention of the state into the child’s life, instead providing support to the local governments in order to develop their social pol-icy, informing society and involving it in reducing environmental risks for children and young people.

• There is a need of definition and systemic organization of prevention institute in Latvia both for adults and children as a part of the prevention system of the rights of every individual envisaging the necessary legal framework and implementation mechanisms.

• Modelling any reaction to children’s behaviour in practice or in legal acts, it must be taken into account that the disregard of a single right of the child means the lack of fulfilment of some child’s needs and a risk situation at the same time that can lead to behavioural risks and violations of law.

• Implementing the prevention of the violation of children’s rights, including juvenile delin-quency prevention, one of the main factors includes justice, transparency and simplicity of the existing system in the country. Limiting children and youth with no reason it is impos-sible to teach them respect towards the law or other social norms. Juvenile delinquency prevention is a part of the protection of the children’s rights – the ensuring of the rights of the child to development.

• There is no unified act in Latvia which would stipulate all efforts related to under-aged persons – both preventive and reactive. There is a reason to consider that all legal norms stipulating the legal framework for juvenile justice in Latvia are dispersed into three separate normative acts (LAVC, CrimL and ACMCN), while the regulation for early preven-tion is set afar – in the Protecpreven-tion of the Rights of the Child Law, not giving a model for a coordinated action to specialists in general.

• To develop prevention practice with children and young people, every local government at the moment have an opportunity to establish and institution to work in the field of juvenile delinquency, and make the decisions for the safety of the child, as set out in LAVC (Section 210, Part 4).

• The normative basis in Latvia regulating the implementation of Section 58 of PRCL as well as the system of administrative punishments stipulated by LAVC need to be overlooked and supplemented relating to minors, as the existing regulation teaches legal nihilism to children, for instance, by applying fines which in every case are paid by parents, even though the child is the guilty party but without any personal income.

• Parental co-responsibility about the children’s offenses must be put under con-sideration; however it should not mean taking the responsibility away from the children or giving it fully to the parents. In cases when the convicted person is under-aged there should be a possibility to apply duties also to parents – attend courses, support groups, or learn parenting skills. Thus the parents could become a supportive force to re-turn the child into a law-obedient life.

• Parenting skills do not appear at the moment of the birth of the child – these are special skills to be learned. Therefore the acquisition of the skills should be organized duly, before the appearance of risk situations or behavioural risks for the child.

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• Preventive work of the state and local governments, including the work with the children from risk groups, is not coordinated; there is only a procedure of separating functions, while collaboration forms exist only on paper. Institutions rather compete than collaborate to achieve common objectives, reporting that the unfulfilled duties are under the responsibility of other institutions.

• Every institution involved in prevention should see the whole of the aims and objectives of prevention and only afterwards decide on its role, so that the division of functions does not turn into laying the responsibility from one institution to another.

• Society needs to be explained in details why prevention issues relating to chil-dren and youth are important to every individual. It has to understand that support and involvement of children from other families is in the interests of safety and successful future of every child and adult in the particular region.

• Simple and easy solutions for everyday life should be searched when planning resources for prevention, for instance, extended day groups at school. The consider-ations should be made on the usefulness of such groups for school children up to Year 9, which would prevent low-achievements of children and adolescents, subsequent truancy and problems with teachers and peers which are the main reasons of behavioural deviations and delinquency risks.

• Instruments to influence the parental behaviour should be applied till the moment when they understand and accept the form of behaviour that is useful for their children and parents themselves. Programmes of a supportive nature should be elaborated for children together with their parents and control mechanism should be established on the fulfilment of the programmes, leaving the removal of custody rights as the very last mean of influence.

• Prevention is the task both for the state and the local government, where state is responsible for the planning, support and informing society but the individual preventive work is organized within the competence of local governments. Indi-vidual prevention is not possible and not advisable to be controlled by a state institution in a local level as the performance of each state institution is centralized but prevention should be based on decentralization and coordination of work closer to the residential place of the involved.

• Comprehensive system of prevention/social control should be established to in-clude supportive measures for children (youth and parents) from their birth till majority age which are suitable for their age, involving GPs (family doctors), pre-school educators, schools, social services, State and municipal police and other specialists, estab-lishing collegiate, professional support institutions in regions.

• All the necessary measures should be taken in order to avoid social services be-coming the “machines” of dividing allowances, not demanding any duties from the receivers of such support, because this situation creates weak and irresponsible consum-ers out of children and adults instead of motivated and responsible membconsum-ers of society.

It cannot be concealed that small states have their specifics in organizing prevention therefore this research and project highly benefited much from the experience of Swiss Confederation.

Latvia cannot compete with the model of juvenile prevention of Switzerland which has long tra-ditions, or with the resources available in that country. However, the conclusions drawn by practitioners in the project in Latvia correspond to the values and methods on which

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the juvenile justice system and prevention model is based on in Switzerland: for in-stance, on legal principles and necessary legal framework in the field of juvenile justice and prevention, on the role of local governments in the organization of prevention and the necessary support from state to local governments for the implementation of these functions, on school as the untapped resources for prevention, and on the need of individual work in prevention. See more about the mentioned and other issues in the next chapter by Jean Zermatten.

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111 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention

Good Practices In The Field Of Juvenile Delinquency’s