The guide book is designed for middle school students, teachers, and parents. It is the first step in the implementation of the program of legal education for children and teens developed by the NGO “Center of Society Development.” The program aims to improve the prevention measures of juvenile delinquency and provide broad legal education for children.
According to the statistics, referred to by the “Center of Social Development,” 30 percent of all the crimes in Ukraine are committed by minors. Children incur criminal liability from the age of 14, but they often do not know what actions may be punished by serious penalties. “Ukrainian children, teens, and young adults traditionally have very arbitrary orientation in the legal sphere and have no experience of independent study of law. Disappointing statistics shows the negative consequences of this, as public ignorance, the lack of information about the concept, causes and consequences of crime become a precondition of any crime,” says Ihor KHARCHENKO, director of the NGO “Center of Social Development.”
According to the initiators of the program, the new guide book should improve this situation. Criminal Code for Children focuses on the kinds of offense for which children are held liable from the age of 14. By doing so the author of the book – lawyer Halyna Paliichuk, tried to explain in language comprehensible for children what is a crime and what will happen if a child commits it. The author gives examples of different offenses, making them reflect possible situations in school life.
“Children often do not understand what laws and principles govern the society. Every day they enter into legal relations, but they do not understand what is right. We have to decide how to teach children so that they would know their rights and would use them accordingly. They should also be aware of legal principles and have legal culture. I conducted trainings for children in schools and saw that children get mixed up with the very concept of ‘children’s rights,’ they do not know who to contact in case of a problem and what they should do in a given situation,” says Halyna PALIICHUK, author of the guide book, coordinator of the Program of Legal Education for Children. As an example the lawyer tells about a fairly common practice among students to call the police and anonymously tell them about schools or other facilities being mined. In students’ imagination it is simply a joke, while in reality such actions entail criminal responsibility. And teens should know about it.
The author of the guide book says that those students who have already read Criminal Code for Children found it interesting, largely thanks to comprehensive presentation and numerous illustrations. “Today there are special teaching materials on jurisprudence, but they are often written by teachers in a language that is not comprehensible and not interesting for school students. It is important that manuals on such serious topics are written in clear and interesting language, so that students would want to read them at home as any other common book and not like a textbook only because they have to,” explains Paliichuk. The lawyer tried to make her guide book according to these principles.
The structure of the Criminal Code for Children repeats that of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. However, the information is provided in an easy to understand manner with bright illustrations. The main characters of the guide book are the well-known to the children fairy tale heroes: criminals here are Puss Basilio, Fox Alice, Carabas-Barabas, and Duremar; the victims are Pinocchio, Malvina, and Piero. The illustrations to the book were made by a young artist and designer Viktoria Deles.
Course “Prevention of Early Crime” for students of the 7th grade has been developed based on the guide book. The course includes extracurricular activities using this textbook, lectures, and discussions with representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the author. Recently Paliichuk presented the Criminal Code for Children and held an introductory lecture to students of the 7th grade in Kyiv Specialized School No. 49.
The first edition of the guide book was published by the Kozaky Publishing House with the assistance of the Yurii Kravchenko Foundation. The publication has received the approval of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Ukraine for use in secondary schools. Libraries of secondary schools will be provided with free textbooks. And the publishers promise that soon the guide book will appear on the shelves of bookstores. The estimated price of the book will be about 50 hryvnias.
