‘Safe School’ Hoped to Curb Teen Crime

New crime prevention measures from the Education Ministry were unveiled, allowing for a greater role for police officers in schools and the compilation of detailed personal files on pupils.

The project, Safe School, has already been kick started, with 40 public schools acting as test cases in this academic year.

The proposal envisages sending specially trained police officers, called speaker-policemen, to schools to lecture pupils on the negative consequences of anti-social behavior.

“This has prompted a certain amount of public skepticism,” Berika Shukakidze, the chief of the Analytical Department at the Ministry of Education, told Civil.Ge. “However, I want to assure you that the policemen will not enter schools to demonstrate their force. They will in fact mostly have an educational role.”

It’s hoped, the official said, that the campaign would help to undermine what he called ‘a prevalent street mentality’. Cooperation with the police is too often equated in many young people’s minds with dishonour.

Teenage crime, including many recent cases of murder, has gripped the public imagination in the past year. On September 18 seven boys between the ages of 15 and 17 were hospitalized after a brawl in downtown Tbilisi.

The juvenile crime rate has increased, according to the official data, from 755 incidents in 2005 to about 1,000 in 2006. These, according to the General Prosecutor’s Office, are mainly petty crimes and theft, followed by hooliganism, drug-related crime and premeditated murder.

Alexander Lomaia, the minister of education, said crime was “one of the major challenges” facing schools.

As part of thier efforts to curb teen crime, the authorities have decided to toughen the law. The minimum age of criminal responsibility will be lowered from the current 14 to 12 years, starting from July 2008. This particular measure is, according to Human Rights Watch, unacceptable.

At one point the Education Ministry even proposed setting up special, so-called ‘alternative’ correctional schools for children with anti-social behavior. The proposal has, however, been temporarily shelved after coming under intense criticism. 

The Education Ministry, however, is refusing to definitively abandon the measure. Its usefulness will become clearer, according to the ministry, in November, when the results of a comprehensive study of schools are released. The study, in the framework of the Safe School project, is charged with identifying the reasons for violence and anti-social behavior in schools.

Meanwhile, the latest measures from the Safe School project, are set to come on stream soon. The proposed digital database will record pupils’ academic performance and personal behavior.

Concerns for the civil liberties of pupils have been downplayed by the authorities. Personal files, they say, will be available only to the parents, the school principal and a sociologist.

Berika Shukakidze of the Education Ministry also dismissed any suggestion that the database might be used for any purpose other than the child’s benefit.

“This system will help us to track an individual child’s records closely in order to react promptly if something goes wrong,”  he said.

The introduction of a code of conduct for schoolchildren is also envisaged in the framework of the project. The code will ban pupils from using mobile phones inside schools and will set a dress code.