Juvie for Bullies

On July 14, Russia's Prosecutor General's office proposed sending children who bully their peers to special temporary detention facilities for an unspecified amount of time. The initiative has been criticized, as isolating a child can cause severe mental and physical trauma.

Olga Katkova, A lla representative from the Procurator General's office, said "the majority of children involved in such illegal actions have not reached the age of administrative or criminal liability."

In Russia, the age of criminal liability is 16. Minors 14 and older can be held accountable for severe crimes, such as rape, murder, robbery and larceny. The office did not specify at what age they would begin sending children to the centers.

Bullying is a widespread problem in Russia. According to the Travmpunkt project, 38% of Russians have encountered bullying at some point in school, and one in four Russians claim to have been victims of bullying. Katkova has not specified how law enforcement will identify bullying, and the General Prosecutor's office did not specify how long the children will be held in these detention facilities.

Eva Merkacheva, a journalist and member of the Human Rights Council, criticized the initiative due to the stress isolation can cause on a child: "We don't know how the children will feel there and what kind of company they will find themselves in. If [authorities] gather children who bully in one place, they will only strengthen themselves." The journalist noted that in past experiments, when teenagers were no longer placed in temporary detention centers, the rate of juvenile crime dropped.