IJJO Interviews

IND
India
Kuldeep Singh worked as a member of the Juvenile Justice Board with the Government of Haryana (India) from June 2011 to December 2016. He worked efficiently to ensure the rehabilitation, speedy trials and legal rights of juveniles in conflict with the law, and to implement the Juvenile Justice Act at judiciary and police levels in his district and across the state. He has organised workshops and delivered lectures for stakeholders such as Special Juvenile Police Units, Child Protection Units, Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards in the state. In addition, he has attended many regional and national seminars and expert meetings related to the Juvenile Justice System in India. He has further specialised in assessing the cognizance of the juveniles staying in observation/special homes due to non-decided cases within a time-bound period, and also that of foreign national juveniles. Mr. Singh is a practising counselling psychologist for the rehabilitation of juveniles who come into conflict with the law. In January 2018 Mr. Signh was appointed as Consultant for the Chandigarh Commission for Protection of Child Rights (Union Territory Administration). Recently, the State Legal Services Authority at the Department of Administration of Justice (State Government) appointed Mr. Singh member of the Permanent Lok Adalat (Permanent Public Court). Mr. Singh also has experience as the Vice President of the NGO Zila Yuva Vikas Sangathan (ZYVS), which runs CHILDLINE, a 24 hour Child Helpline for children in need of care and protection, i.e. missing children, abandoned children, runaway children and victims of child labour. This NGO also works on projects for children’s education, financially supporting BPL (below poverty line) children in their education, and on opening shelter homes for children and special needs children. In addition, the NGO runs over 150 training centres, and is now embarking on international collaborations for children’s schooling projects.
ESP
Spain
Esther Fernández Molina is professor of Criminology at the University of Castilla-La Mancha and Academic Secretary of the Master’s degree in Criminology and Juvenile Crime at the same university. She is responsible for the Criminology Research team at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, and as such is principal researcher for various European, national and regional projects. Her main areas of research are juvenile justice, trends in crime and public perception of crime; specifically, she is interested in the study of fear with regard to crime and public attitudes towards criminal justice and juvenile punishment. From 2013 to 2016, she was president of the Spanish Society of Criminological Research, and she continues to be involved with the society, contributing to the development of this discipline in Spain.
GBR
United Kingdom
Professor Barry Goldson PhD holds the Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is also: Visiting Professorial Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Professorial Fellow in Social Science at Liverpool Hope University, UK; and Adjunct Professor at the School of Justice, QUT, Brisbane, Australia. He is the Chairperson of the British Society of Criminology Youth Criminology/Youth Justice Network (YC/YJN) and Co-Chairperson of the European Society of Criminology Thematic Working Group on Juvenile Justice (TWGJJ). Professor Goldson, who is an academic member of the European Council for Juvenile Justice, has researched and published extensively. His most recent books include: Youth Crime and Juvenile Justice; Youth in Crisis? ‘Gangs’, Territoriality and Violence; Youth Crime and Justice, 2nd edition and Justice and Penal Reform: Re-shaping the penal landscape. He is currently working on three further books that will be published in 2018 and 2019: Juvenile Justice in Europe: Past, Present and Future (2018); Youth Justice and Penality in Comparative Context (2018) and Re-imagining Juvenile Justice (2019). Professor Goldson is networked across the international research community and he also has long-standing relations with a range of national and international governmental and non-governmental, human rights and progressive penal reform organisations.
AUS
Australia
Dr Wendy O’Brien is a criminologist with research expertise on violence against children, children's rights, and children's access to justice. With a sustained focus on the legal and therapeutic responses to children in conflict with the law, Wendy’s research comprises both legal scholarship and research on the practical implementation of public policy - including evaluation of social sector service delivery to children. Wendy has provided expert evidence to a number of child protection reviews, and she regularly serves on research advisory boards for projects on child sexual assault. She is also a current member of the Asia-Pacific Council for Juvenile Justice (APCJJ). Wendy lectures in criminology at Deakin University in Australia. Prior to her appointment at Deakin, Wendy served seven years as Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Crime Commission where she conducted intelligence led research and provided policy advice on legal and therapeutic responses to children in conflict with the law.
KEN
Kenya
Marco de Milato is the CEFA (European Committee for Agricultural Training) Regional Coordinator in Kenya and Somalia. He holds a Master degree in International Relations from the University of Genoa, Italy. He has certificates on various development topics in the realms of international cooperation, project writing, Monitoring and Evaluation, Lobby and Advocacy. His career is focused on human rights management, child protection and children rights EU funded programs in East Africa and India. He began in Senegal in 2005 and from 2007 to 2010 he worked as Country Coordinator in India, focusing on Child Protection and education. Since late 2010 he is based in Nairobi – Kenya, as CEFA coordinator for Kenya and Somalia. Furthermore, since 2015 Marco is the national representative for Italian NGOs in Kenya. He has wealth of experience in project management as well as in the development of new project proposals for both private and public donors. CEFA has over ten years’ experience of consolidated practice, capacity building, collaborative structural reforms implementation and inception of rights-based service delivery approaches within Kenyan juvenile and criminal justice sectors. As an organization working in both children statutory institutions and state correctional facilities, it has developed strategic partnerships with agencies from the Government of Kenya (GoK) and other Non-State Actors (NSAs) which deal with the administration of Justice.