A recent report by UNICEF investigates the opinions and perspectives of the Eastern Caribbean population regarding three main topics: children in conflict with the law, corporal punishment, and sexual abuse. The study was comprised of 4,600 interviews, and attempts to understand changes in attitudes and perceptions of these issues. It was conducted between October and November of 2024, and concerns eight countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It forms part of a wider campaign to promote positive forms of discipline and rehabilitation for children that protect their rights. Knowledge of shifts in opinion helps UNICEF to implement effective and successful interventions in these countries.
Regarding how children in conflict with the law are perceived, 63% of participants saw them as young people in need of help, support, and protection, while only 9% saw them as a lost cause. Encouragingly, there was a strong support for rehabilitative approaches and child-friendly measures (56% claimed that the latter were “highly necessary”). These approaches are aimed not only at the child but also at their parents (80% were in favour of parenting interventions). This correlates with the responses regarding who has responsibility for the crimes committed, which point not only to the child (38%) but also to the parents (15% fully responsible, 50% partially responsible) and the belief that society has failed the child (31%).
Despite this encouraging amount of support for rehabilitative approaches, the report highlighted a worrying persistence in the belief that individuals had the right to know the identity of children who commit crimes (76% for violent crimes, 75% for sexual crimes). A similarly concerning finding from this study is the continued support for corporal punishment as an acceptable manner of discipline at home (only one quarter support its ban, the same percentage as in 2014) and at school (where support for its ban has actually dropped from 45 percent in 2014 to 38 percent in 2024).
As a response to these findings, UNICEF’s Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area (ECA) has outlined recommendations to improve interventions concerning these issues. UNICEF encourages the implementation of diversion programmes and special court systems for children in conflict with the law, and also advocates for more preventative interventions. In this sense, the report suggests increasing support for parenting programmes, as well as programmes in schools for positive behaviour management. Finally, UNICEF calls for more awareness of the idea that, regardless of their crimes, children in conflict with the law have the right to anonymity.