Comments to General Comment N° 10

Francisco Estrada V.
Executive Director ONG INFAJUS (Chile)

Comment to No. 42:

States must ensure respect for the child's right to remain silent and not self-incriminate.
The waiver of this right must have guarantees that it was made with knowledge of its
consequences, and freely and voluntarily.

Comment to No. 49:

The States have the duty to grant all children the highest level of quality of their criminal
system of free and specialized legal defense. The training in litigation should include the
perspective of psychology on adolescent development, juvenile criminology, evidence-
based interventions, Convention on the rights of the child, ethical duties of the defender of
the child, among others.
The specialization must be expressed in addition to training and ongoing training, work
routines, management indicators, suitable spaces, adequate resources, schedules
according to adolescent life.
The specialized legal defense must cover the execution phase of the sentence or measure.

Comment to No. 71:

In order to ensure that the response that is given to the crime is proportional to the
infraction and also to the age, circumstances and needs of the child, psycho-social
assessments must be carried out that provide information for decision-makers.

Comment to No. 73:

Add about compliance phase.
The intervention during the measure or sentence must have legal regulation, with the
possibility of judicial control and must offer the adolescent the opportunity to participate
in order to be a subject of the intervention and not a mere object of it.

The intervention must be subject to certain limits:

a. Throughout all the intervention, ample guarantees must be granted to safeguard the right
to defense, that is, access to the execution folder must be allowed to the defender or the
professional designated by him and promptly informed of technical decisions that may
significantly alter the plan initially decided.
b. The intervention should be based on the principle of two-way, that is, that as a criminal
assumes the degree of coactivity that entails, but that as access to public offer universal
policies, it must be voluntary and not result in punitive or aggravating consequences of grief
for the teenager. Maximum offer, minimum restriction of rights.
c. The intervention has time limits and purposes, both framed by the plan of intervention
or execution, approved jurisdictionally;
d. The intervention must combine the duty to report the breach and the development of
the plan to the court, with the duty of confidentiality proper to a professional relationship.
The opinion of the adolescent should also be considered when evaluating the program or
center where he meets his measure or sanction.

Review of the measure or sanction.

In consideration of the reintegration goals that guide the juvenile justice system, the
measures and sanctions must be periodically revised in order to adjust the duration and
modality to these objectives with flexibility.
For these reviews it will be useful to have reports on compliance with the sanction or
measure, but the presence of the adolescent and the visit of the judge to the center or
program will also be useful.