BPS launches child friendly policing

Larona Makhaiza | Monday March 6, 2023 06:00

The procedures target mostly the reception, interviewing and referral of cases involving children. Goitseone Ngono, who is the director, Gender and Child Protection, took the people through the whole process that led to the setting up the procedures.

“To come with these procedures, we worked with the Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MESD), the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP), the Ministry of Health (MOH) as well as civil societies including Childline Botswana,” Ngono said.

Ngono further said to deliver the mandate, which they were really determined to see materializing, they embarked on comprehensive consultations across the country to gather some feedback and insights from diverse people from children, parents, NGO’s and police officers.

And now after embarking on the whole process of going around the country, Ngono said they saw it fit to invest in capacity building for the officers to ensure that they acquire skills and knowledge needed to efficiently and effectively provide the best services to children. For this to materialise, they took some officers for training.

Some have already completed training and 175 more police officers are expected to complete training before April this year. In the new reviewed policies and processes that are to be child friendly, the BPS has already commenced applying the child friendly procedures. “Based on the findings from these consultations and review, we have made improvements, we have made sure that interventions are deployed in a timely manner and that they are gender sensitive and they are not constrained by gender stereotypes as the needs of boys and girls in the juvenile system differ,” Ngono stated.

Ngono further noted that they have also standardised their processes to ensure that they provide consistent, uniform and effective services to children. With standardization, the BPS will also ensure that well coordinated, comprehensive and synchronised interventions are achieved.

One other strategy that came with the implementation of the procedures was to improve their data collection systems; with age and gender disaggregating of data to make sure that they have better understanding of the challenges facing children and also help them tailor their investigations accordingly. For his part, the Acting Commissioner of Police Phemelo Ramakorwane stated that the main mandate of the procedures is to create a conducive environment for children where they can feel safe to liaise with the police any time they want to as they want to curb child abuse.

“The procedures also draw alignment from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose committee recommended that cases involving children must be investigated properly through a child sensitive judicial procedure,” Ramakorwane said. With that said, the acting police commissioner said they have also introduced the use of audio visual techniques equipment for the interrogation of children and they have already commenced with it.

“The first installation of the audio visual techniques is complete at the Broadhurst Police Station and that an order has been made for the other police stations and completion is expected to be done by September 2023 at all police stations,” the police chief added. Ramakorwane exudes confidence that the child friendly procedures will really curb the high numbers of child abuse in the country which were sitting at 2,984 cases in the previous year as now they will be dealing with children better than before with 1,852 of these cases being defilement and 596 rape cases.