POSSIBILITIES OF INSTITUTIONAL CARE FOR CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS AS PERPETRATORS AND VICTIMS OF CRIMINAL OFFENSES IN THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA

Abstract

The ways of caring for children and adolescents as perpetrators and victims of criminal offenses are limited primarily by the specificity of this age period. Other aggravating circumstances are double roles that are found in them, they are often victims and then perpetrators of criminal offenses, and finally a need to work with this population both therapeutically and educationally. In accordance with this, we can say that our possibilities for care are limited, both with regards to personnel and institutionally. In preventive work, it is necessary to recognize the first signs of maladjusted behaviour, which are noticeable even in preschool age, and which is why it is important to strengthen professional competences of preschool age services. If the problem is not recognized at this age, there is a much greater possibility that delinquent behavior will occur in a more intense form at school age. Unfortunately, we have realized from dramatic examples that happened in school environments, that seemingly calm or timid behaviour of young people can lead to disastrous consequences.With the reform of health institutions in the field of mental health, we have reduced hospital capacities in favour of strengthening services at the primary level in the community, which are still not sufficiently capacitated with personnel from the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, when a therapeutic approach to a victim and a perpetrator is needed. Due to the increase in the number of young people with behavioral disorders, it is evident that we lack an institution that has an educational as well as a therapeutic role. We have also encountered the impossibility of caring for minors, when a court imposes a measure of compulsory treatment, because there are still no personnel or spatial capacities for this type of approach. The only health institution, i.e. department in the Republic of Srpska which works therapeutically with children and adolescents in a hospital is at the Psychiatry Clinic at the University Clinical Center of the Republic of Srpska. This department has largely strengthened its professional capacities, but is limited by spatial capacities and length of treatment, in accordance with the recommendations for the length of acute treatment.