Government plans to make criminals out of youngsters

By Hussain Aboo, 15 October 2007 DO

At a time when Maldivian jails are overflowing with criminals and half the convicts are roaming the streets of the capital because the Penitentiary system cannot accommodate them, the last thing that the criminal justice system should be doing is to create additional categories of crimes to pass jail sentences on. But that's exactly what the Attorney General's Office is currently doing. They are busy increasing the punishments for sexual misdemeanours, euphemistically labelled 'acts of bad behaviour.'

If AG Office has its way, soon they will pass regulations under which an 18 old young couple petting on the beachfront behind Dharubaaruge could end up with jail sentences, Haveeru Daily reports. With the present condition of Maldivian jails, the youngsters are more likely to end up hardened criminals, rather than reformed citizens.

There is no rehabilitation program in the jails and hard core criminals are locked in the same cells as first time minor offenders. The innocent girl who gets sentenced for nothing more than kissing her boyfriend, is likely to end up raped (probably by a jail official) on her very first night in the cell. The boy is likely to be gang-raped and sodomised. That's just the beginning. By the time the young couple is out they will have been trained in theft, drug dealing and prostitution.

Maldives already has 1 out of every 100 young males incarcerated in jail. This is a world record, signifying the total collapse of the criminal justice system. It is the result of failure to adopt modern methods of criminal rehabilitation. Long after the rest of the world has learnt that jailing youngsters for minor offences is not the answer to reduce crime in the society, Maldives seems to be determined to march backwards into the Middle Ages.

There are real criminals roaming the streets of Male, armed with box cutters, stealing and robbing. Authorities are helpless in combating them. But they seem to be determined to make criminals out of young lovers. It's about time they started a counselling service for deviant youth to make them conform to societal norms of behaviour.