Chapter 6.6.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

Chapter 6: The System of Offences Law

6.6. Juvenile treatment systems

Communist offences law, which does not have a penal system, relativizes the distinction between treatment for adults and treatment for juveniles, so there is no need to prepare a separate juvenile law.

However, the extreme policy of treating adults and juveniles completely equally is not adopted, and appropriate exceptions are made for the treatment of juveniles, taking into account the characteristics of juveniles who are still developing.

The basic principle in juvenile treatment is to respect the plasticity (flexibility) that preserves the possibility of personal growth because they are minors. This is not denied as an idea even in the juvenile law, which is based on the penal system, but in the juvenile law, which is established as an exception to the penal system, the more serious the crime, the greater the desire to punish the juvenile offender, and the idea of ​​plasticity tends to be pushed aside.

In contrast, in communist juvenile treatment, respect for plasticity is a guiding principle that is implemented without exception. For this reason, the concept of a "juvenile" is not defined formally by the legal age of adulthood, but is determined according to the biological and medical stage of development.

Therefore, for example, a person who has reached the legal age of adulthood but is considered to be a minor in terms of their developmental stage due to a developmental disorder or intellectual disability will be recognized and treated as a "juvenile."

Conversely, a person who is a minor in terms of the law but is judged to be at a developmental stage equivalent to that of an adult - the closer a minor is to the legal age of adulthood, the more likely they are to be recognized as such - will be recognized and treated as an "adult."

With the concept of juveniles thus made flexible, the treatment given to offenders who are recognized as juveniles is of two types: "educational observation" and "transfer to a correctional school."

"Educational observation" is a treatment that could be considered a juvenile version of probation for juveniles with low antisocial tendencies, but it places more emphasis on education than adult probation.

"Transfer to a correctional school" is a type of restrictive treatment aimed at juveniles with strong antisocial tendencies who are difficult to rehabilitate through "educational observation," but unlike adult correctional facilities, it allows for correction to go hand in hand with academics.

Furthermore, juveniles who are referred to custody for specific problematic behavior (delinquency) that does not constitute a serious offence, or juveniles who have committed a minor first offence such as shoplifting, are removed from the juvenile treatment route and sent directly to the appropriate juvenile welfare institution for welfare protection measures.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 6.5.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

Chapter 6: The System of Offences Law

6.5. Various correctional treatment systems -part 2-

As mentioned in the previous article, offenders with severe anti-social tendencies who are in great need of correction are given correctional treatment in a correctional facility. There are various policy possibilities for classifying this correctional treatment, but the more simple the treatment system is and the more consideration it gives to human rights, the better.

In this respect, correctional treatment under communist offences law is different from criminal punishment in that it is not a punishment proportional to the severity of the crime, and therefore the period is not presented in numerical terms from the beginning, such as 1 year, 10 years, etc.

However, from a human rights perspective, it is not appropriate to make all treatment indefinite, so a "renewable term system" in which a predetermined legal period is used as one unit = term, and terms are renewed according to the progress of correction seems to be more appropriate.

Here, a term means one unit of a correctional program with a period set in advance by law. The basic unit of term is divided into three ranks, from type 1 to type 3, depending on the subject's level of correctional need, and the length of each term increases in increments of two years with each rank increase.

For example, the term for the type 1 correctional treatment is one year, the term for the type 2 correctional treatment is three years, and the maximum term for the type 3 correctional treatment is five years. These terms will be renewed in line with progress of correction.

In addition to these subclassifications according to the degree of need for correction, there are also further classifications based on whether psychiatric factors such as mental illness are found to have been the cause of the individual offences.

If, as a result of the assessment, the treatment given when these are not found is called the A treatment, and the treatment given when these are found is called the B treatment, the most detailed classification would be to separate each of the types of correctional treatment listed above into the A and the B treatment.

Assuming that even the renewed maximum correctional treatment does not result in progress to a level where rehabilitation is possible, life custodial confinement, which holds a target for life, marks the limit of correctional treatment, but as this is different from a punishment such as life imprisonment, all corrective efforts are not abandoned, and there is still room for social rehabilitation once correction has progressed.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.