Juveniles imprisoned for criminal offences need to be given the chance to reform so they don’t continue to re-offend, India’s Norbertine priest, law court judge, and social worker, Fr Antony Sebastion, says.
The jack-of-all-trades set up the Empowerment of Children and Human Rights Organisation (ECHO) in 2000, and recently spent two weeks in Perth learning how the juvenile justice system operates in Australia.
ECHO assists juveniles who face hardship, including street children, child labourers and orphans, but its main concern is children who have been arrested for crimes.
Its purpose is essentially three-fold – the rehabilitation, reformation and reintegration of juvenile criminals back into society.
Fr Antony told The Record the problem of juvenile imprisonment is a worldwide problem that needs to be urgently addressed.
Despite the significant progress India has made over the past decade in eradicating juvenile crime, largely thanks to Fr Antony’s work, it remains a constant challenge.
“Almost 60 per cent of street children or child labourers are likely to get in conflict with the law,” Fr Antony says.
“There are a number of agencies working for them in India, but when they get to the legal problems, no one comes to help them.”
As such, ECHO works as an advocacy group for such children. It has been estimated that Bangalore is home to about 150,000 street children.
Fr Antony says Indian children can find their way into conflict with the law through all sorts of crimes.
“They’re into everything, from petty offences to serious offences,” he explains.
Unfortunately, Fr Antony says, poverty is responsible for the majority of juvenile crimes committed.
“Almost 90 per cent of children that come to us belong to a very poor social and economic background,” he says.
“The poverty is an underlying factor which has to be dealt with first to minimise the crimes in India.”
Children, he says, are most likely to be guilty of stealing, which may be just a loaf of bread initially but much larger items later on.
But the Norbertine priest says punishing such offenders heavily is not the best response to the problem.
“Jail is not meant to punish them, it’s meant to reform and to help these children,” he says.
And that’s where ECHO comes in.
In Bangalore, ECHO set up the first and only detention centre run by an independent, non-government organisation, where reform, rather than punishment, is the focus.
“It’s a model for India as well as for the international community,” Fr Antony says proudly. And he has good reason to be proud. Since commencing in 2011, not one child who has stayed at ECHO’s detention centre has re-offended.
The ‘Juvenile Special Home’, as it is known, houses children convicted by the Juvenile Court. Fr Antony says the home is designed to meet each child’s best interests, without requiring strict regulations and prison gates.
One of ECHO’s strongest focuses in the reformation of children is education.
“A child is in the process of the formation of his own personality, it’s not completed, it’s still at an early stage,” he says.
“We try to instil values and high hopes in them. Whatever they want to [achieve] they should be able to.”
Fr Antony says no one is born to commit a crime and, consequently, reforming one’s behaviour is almost always possible.
“At least 90 per cent can be reformed,” he says. “Even if they are criminals they should be given ample opportunities for reform so they can come back to society.”
In addition to focusing on education programs, ECHO has also initiated several programs aimed at assisting juvenile criminals to regain their confidence and sense of self-worth.
One such program that commenced in 2001 is the Traffic Police Assistants Program, in which young offenders work with local police to direct traffic.
But Fr Antony says such programs may only be of assistance to juvenile criminals in India.
“Every child is unique and different in its own way,” he says. “You have to look at each child’s background… to develop a program accordingly.”
During his time in Perth, Fr Antony visited prisons in Canning Vale and Banksia, and met with the assistant commissioner for Corrective Services.
The visiting priest says he noticed a large number of Aboriginal juveniles in both facilities, which reflects a disturbing trend around the country.
In 2007, Australia’s juvenile detention rate for non-Indigenous people was 14 per 100,000. But the rate for the Indigenous population was a staggering 28 times larger at 397 per 100,000.
And WA has the highest juvenile detention rate in the country.
Fr Antony says the discrepancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous offenders needs attention.
“The whole approach here perhaps needs a re-thinking,” he says.
“You need to think about what other opportunities can you open up for them while they are in the detention centres.”
Fr Antony’s passion for helping children, particularly those struggling with crime, was first noticed when, as a seminarian, he championed the rights of the poor. Friend and fellow Norbertine priest Fr Joshy Arimana Chacko says Fr Antony was about 24 years old when he took up the cause.
“There were two slums where the poorest of the poor lived,” he explains. “Thousands of people used to live there. For some reason, the electricity connection and the water supply were disconnected from those two slums, and there were thousands of people deprived of power and drinking water.
“One fine morning [Fr Antony] was successful in mobilising about 1,200 people, especially women and little children, all carrying their water buckets, and they blocked the national highway, stopping all the government officers from working, so the city came to a standstill.
“The police issued an arrest warrant on the spot… and it appeared on the front page of the national newspapers, the seminarian most wanted.
“All of a sudden there was a lot of pressure on the government and the politicians to get involved to rectify the issue… the police department had to drop the arrest warrant, and there were people congratulating him and encouraging him to take up other similar social causes.”
A passion for the rights of the underprivileged now well and truly aflame within Fr Antony, it took a second, unforgettable incident to inspire him to do something for juveniles in India.
Once during his theology studies, Fr Antony was preparing to board a train travelling from Pune to Bombay.
“As we were going to the platform we saw two or three policemen taking children, tied up by a single rope, to the first platform which is where the police station is,” he says.
Despite questioning the police about it, Fr Antony and his friends were told to stay out of it, as the children were pushed into a truck and taken away.
“I got a shock from it,” he says. “It has stayed in my mind ever since.”
After his ordination in 1992, Fr Antony completed a Master’s degree in sociology at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands. His thesis was titled ‘An echo of the crime in the streets of Bangalore, India’.
“My research was to understand the problems of street children from a legal perspective,” he says.
“I found that the number of children picked up by the police was huge.” His study became the basis for establishing ECHO in 2000, initially as a means of providing children with legal assistance.
In 2007, Fr Antony, by now a well-respected figure in India, was appointed as a juvenile court judge in Karnataka, where he works one day a week. He’s the only Catholic priest in such a position in India. “It’s a great experience,” he says.
“I used to be an advocate for the children from the other side, and sometimes it could take weeks or months to get a child released. Now, in a second, I can do it.
“It’s been a great move from an arguer to a decision-maker and we’ve been able to do a lot of good things because of that.”