Justice for Children in Ghana: The Untold Dimension

Abstract

Abstract Studies on criminal justice in Ghana have implicated the police in bribery, breach of trust, crime trade, and brutality, among others. This study departed from the approach of “perceived wrongs” cited against the police and examined the less untold challenges which militate against child-friendly policing in the country. A total of 160 police respondents were randomly selected from three police districts in the Northern Region of Ghana in a correlational study design. Administering a questionnaire was used as the primary data collection method. The study found that the police are constrained by inadequate cells for juveniles, inadequate serviceable vehicles, lack of remand homes for juveniles, lack of State-owned temporary shelters for victims of abuse and inadequate budgetary support for handling juvenile crimes. Using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance, with a 147.119 (df = 5) value for χ2, the asymptotic significance (p) was 0.000, signifying a significant agreement among police officers’ grading scores. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (W) figure was found to be 0.751, implying that 75.1% of the ranking scores given by police officers were in consonance with these challenges which have restrained them from any practical child-friendly policing and administration of juvenile justice in the study locality.