Children in the criminal justice system in Lithuania: problems and solutions
ENThe goal to improve the procedure of child’s participation in legal proceedings was set in Lithuania in 2005. The interdisciplinary group at the Ministry of Justice was formed to explore the issue and to prepare the suggestions. The conclusions were that children as victims and witnesses may be traumatised once more in the legal proceedings because of multiple interviews by different persons; meeting the suspect in legal proceedings; interviewing a child without video or audio recording; overlong process of investigation; inadequate child representation in legal proceedings; insufficient qualification of interviewers (officers); lack of specialists of Child rights protection service and psychologist for assisting a child, etc. The complex proposals, how to improve the interviewing process and to prevent children from second trauma in legal proceedings, were settled. The aim of the chapter is to review what have changed in the children’s participation in legal proceedings and how effectively criminal justice system deal with children victims and witnesses after the implementation of improvements of child’s participation in legal proceedings. The main changes such as the amendments of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the implementation of child interview room system, the establishment of main requirements for child interviewing in pre-trial investigation and others are discussed. Definitive achievements and still remaining problems, as well as made mistakes and learned practical lessons are presented in the article. Key Words: Children, victims, witnesses, legal proceedings, second trauma, child interview. [From the publication]
