[16 January 2012] - Calls to abolish child prisons have intensified across the country, led by the Indonesian Police Profession Association (ISPKI). 

Children are currently held in prisons in Indonesia due to the fact that at eight years old children are held criminally responsible for their crimes. 

Although it sounds shocking that this could be legal, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not state explicitly that it is illegal to hold a child under the age of 18 in prison. 

Article 37 (b) does state that “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

Outside of arguments over the legality of holding children as young as eight years old in prison, advocates have called on the government to re-evaluate and abolish child prisons.

They claim that conditions faced by children within the prison environment was harmful, and that more needed to be done to protect them.

There are reports of violence committed by police against child inmates, as well as child finding themselves detained with hardened adult criminals. Such detention will often result in the children becoming hardened criminals themselves, learning how to commit more serious crimes from their environment.

One such group includes the National Commission on Child Protection, which has called for the system to be re-examined.

The vice chairman of the ISPKI spoke out that “We must realise that we need to evaluate the treatment for child inmates. For certain cases, children must be returned to their family.”

The topic of children being held in detention is one that is gaining more attention internationally and even in developed states.

Cases of children being detained often have to do with immigration issues in the West, where children of illegal immigrants are sometimes held in detention centres for months.

Israeli detention of Palestinian children is also a high profile issue. A report on the Israeli military-justice system in the West Bank compiled by the Palestine office of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, which works closely with the UN and European states, found that inside the territories, the Israeli military deems any Palestinian who is 16 years and older as an adult, while inside Israel, the US and most other countries, adulthood is reached at age 18.