Individual Assessment of Suspected Or Accused Children: Insights Into Good Practice in the Light of the Directive (EU) 2016/800
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INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT LDREN I OF SUSPECTED OR ACCUSED CHILDREN: insights into good practice in the light of the Directive (EU) 2016/800 Edited by Rūta Vaičiūnienė DUAL ASSESSMENT OF SUSPECTED OR ACCUSED CH OR ACCUSED DUAL ASSESSMENT OF SUSPECTED I V I IND INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT OF SUSPECTED OR ACCUSED CHILDREN: insights into good practice in the light of the Directive (EU) 2016/800 INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT OF SUSPECTED OR ACCUSED CHILDREN: insights into good practice in the light of the Directive (EU) 2016/800 Edited by Rūta Vaičiūnienė Vilnius, 2020 SCIENTIFIC EDITOR Rūta Vaičiūnienė (Law Institute of Lithuanian Centre for Social Science) AUTHORS Dr Rūta Vaičiūnienė (chapters 1, 3, 4, 8) Dr Simonas Nikartas (chapters 2, 4) Dr Jolanta Apolevič (chapters 1, 3, 4, 8) Vita Povilaitytė (chapters 3) Assist. Prof. dr Dora Dodig Hundrić (chapter 7) Assoc. Prof. dr Neven Ricijaš (chapter 7) Assist. Prof. dr Anja Mirosavljević (chapter 7) PhD Fellow Sabina Mandić (chapters 3, 7) Prof. dr Angelika Pitsela (chapter 5) Dr Georgios Nouskalis (chapter 5) Dr Charalampos Karagiannidis (chapter 5) PhD Fellow Anastasia Giagkou (chapter 5) Christine Mavrou (chapters 6) REVIEWERS Assoc. Prof. dr Ivana Borić (Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb) Prof. dr Odeta Merfeldaitė (Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, Mykolas Riomeris University) Dr Tautvydas Žėkas (Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Lithuania) The book as whole and each chapter were triple blind peer reviewed Authors as indicated in the book reserve their copyright. Copying is permitted only for non-commer- cial purposes and provided that the source is cited. Each author is responsible for his or her own chapter or part of the chapter and the publisher accepts no liability for any use of the contents or violations of third party rights. This book is published as a part of the EU co-funded Justice pro- gramme Project “Procedural safeguards of accused or suspected children: improving the implementation of the right to individual assessment” (IA-CHILD) No. 802059–JUST-JACC-AG-2017 and is available for downloading in the English, Lithuanian, Croatian and Greek languages at the IA-CHILD Project website: //teise.org/ en/lti-veikla/projektines-veiklos/ia-child/ The content of this book represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains. EDITOR Avril Calder (IAYFJM International Association of Youth and Family Judges and Magistrates) Publisher © Rūta Vaičiūnienė, Simonas Nikartas, Jolanta Apolevič, Žara, Vita Povilaitytė, Dora Dodig Hundrić, Neven Ricijaš, Akademijos str. 4, Vilnius, Anja Mirosavljević, Sabina Mandić, Lithuania LT-08412 Anastasia Giagkou, Angelika Pitsela, www.zara.lt; [email protected] Georgios Nouskalis, Charalampos Karagiannidis, Publication Year 2020 Christine Mavrou, 2020 ISBN 978-9986-34-370-7 © Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, 2020 © Žara, 2020 Contents Foreword .......................................................................................................................... 7 1 Procedural Safeguards and Individual Assessment of Accused or Suspected Children in Criminal Proceedings: Introduction ..........................................11 1.1. Children’s Rights in Criminal Proceedings: International Legal Developments ...........................................................................14 1.2. Strengthening Procedural Safeguards in the EU: Directive 2016/800 and Individual Assessment ......................................................19 1.3. In Conclusion: the Importance of Procedural Justice in Juvenile Criminal Proceedings ................................................................................................25 2 Towards the Effective Implementation of the Directive: Review and Recommendations for the Individual Assessment of the Child ....................................29 2.1. Introduction: Ensuring the Needs of the Child as a Precondition for Individual Assessment ...............................................................................................29 2.2. The Goals of Individual Assessment ........................................................................33 2.3. What Instruments Should be Used for Conducting Individual Assessment? .....40 2.4. Who is Entitled to Carry out the Individual Assessment? .....................................43 2.5. Who Has the Right to an Individual Assessment? ..................................................45 2.6. When Should an Individual Assessment be Carried out? .....................................49 3 Conceptualizing Forensic Juvenile Assessment: Main Concepts, Theoretical Approaches and Debates .........................................................................53 3.1. Forensic Assessment: Main Concepts and Approaches .........................................54 3.2. Juvenile Forensic Assessment ..................................................................................... 58 3.3. Risk Assessment Paradigms ......................................................................................67 4 Implementation Of Individual Assessment In Lithuania .............................................85 4.1. Legal Background and Regulation of the Juvenile Justice System in Lithuania ................................................................................................................85 4.1.1. A System of Measures for Offending Behaviour by Children .................................... 85 5 4.1.2. Institutions Responsible for Criminal Proceedings Against Juveniles ...................... 95 4.1.3. Institutions Responsible for The Enforcement of Sanctions on Juvenile Offenders ........................................................................................................... 97 4.2 Legal Background and Regulation of Individual Assessment ...............................97 4.3. Implementation of the an Individual Assessment from the Experts’ Point of View ............................................................................................................104 4.4. Conclusion and Recommendations .......................................................................110 5 Implementation of Individual Assessment in Greece ................................................115 5.1. Legal Background and Juvenile Justice System in Greece ...................................115 5.2. Individual Assessment in Greece ...........................................................................132 5.3. Research on Implementation of Individual Assessment in Greece ....................140 6 Implementation of Individual Assessment in Cyprus ................................................153 6.1. Legal Background and Regulation of Juvenile Justice in Cyprus .......................153 6.2. Individual Assessment of Juvenile Offenders .......................................................160 6.3. Research on the Implementation of Individual Assessment in Cyprus .............162 7 Implementation of Individual Assessment in Croatia ................................................167 7.1. Legal Framework and Juvenile Justice System in Croatia ....................................167 7.2 Conceptual and Practical Framework of Individual Assessment in Croatia .....181 7.3. Methodology for the Implementation of Individual Assessment: Assessment, Planning and Reporting .....................................................................195 7.4. What can be Learned from Research on Individual Assessment Implementation in Croatia? .....................................................................................204 8 Concluding Remarks ...............................................................................................213 6 Foreword We all know that children and young people are the future of our societies and that we should do everything we can to nurture and protect them until they are fully developed. If a child or young person is going off the rails we need to find the best way of helping them back on track. That is why individual assessment of young people involved with the law is so important. We want to find the par- ticular strategy with the best chance of working for that particular young person. An individual assessment also offers the best way of involving the young person in their own future. It therefore gives me great pleasure to contribute the foreword to this book which is rich in information about individual assessment (IA) in four countries—Lith- uania, the lead partner in the project, Croatia, Cyprus and Greece. In detail, the partners are the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (Lith- uania), the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences of the University of Zagreb (Croatia), HFC Hope for Children Policy Center (Cyprus) and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), The project’s second workshop was in March 2020, and, as I said in my introduc- tory speech to that workshop: ….this Individual Assessment Project is extremely valuable. I know, be- cause as a Youth Court Magistrate of 35 years’ standing in Inner Lon- don, I can truly say that without the input of the Youth Offending Service (YOS) officers who prepare individual assessments, absolutely tailored for each child, my decisions, the decisions of the bench, would have been less well based and outcomes for each child less focused on good outcomes. It has been interesting