JUVY?

JUVENILE FACILITIES

“I had to do it, because I couldn’t take it anymore. It was getting too much; the harassment was on the extreme. For Christ’s sake, he raped me!” Those were the words of 17 years old Samara (not the real name) who was arrested for killing her step father.

I visited the Kirikiri medium prison sometimes last year, which happens to be where my mother works at and I came in contact with young people, some less than 18 and others a little bit older. People you wouldn’t even expect to be there but somehow they ended up there anyway.

I remember watching American movies and grab one or two things about Juvenile prisons for young people and I’d often ask my mother if we had them in Nigeria, but there never came an answer. 

Looking back at that visit and the kind of prison environment, a juvenile prison would have been more suitable for Samara not a medium prison because she rid the world of one bad person (just saying).

Even now that I think about it, we do need to take the law into our hands sometimes, Extreme cases are bound to occur and when no one will listen to us we need to do something. Samara’s mother didn’t believe her and the police system is that bad, she did it. Leaving us with one less bad person to care about. (Please, don’t take this paragraph serious).

Seriously speaking, Teenagers don’t deserve to be going through what adults are going through. Why don’t we have Youth Detention Centres in our State, or should I say our Country at large?

---- Thoughts on this?