Beyond 'policing': an initiative by a senior policeman to protect unprotected children

by Dr. K. A. S. Wickrama, Professor, Iowa State University, USA.

Millions of people all over the world become victims of crime each year. These victims go unnoticed and uncared for because they would experience more trouble if they co-operate with responsible legal systems against the accused.

This situation is clearly observed when children become victims of their parents. In Sri Lanka, several thousands of children are subject to physical and sexual abuse of their parents each year. These children are unprotected and vulnerable because they are very often deprived not only of economic support but also of parents' close interaction, care, love and affection.

I had an opportunity to participate in a public event at Sujatha Balika Vidyalaya in Matara organized by the Foundation for the Protection of Unprotected Children (FPUC) to launch a province-wide campaign to protect children who have been victims of crime, abuse and natural disasters as well. The FPUC has been set up by the Southern range DIG D. W. Prathapasinghe, who is also the Chairman of the FPUC. Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva is an active patron of the FPUC. The FPUC operational center has been set up at Kathaluwa. This office is housed in a building donated by the Hema Basnayake family.

The main objective of the FPUC is to look after child victims by providing financial and social support with a far-reaching goal of protecting these vulnerable children from being delinquents and criminals. Police officers including SPs, ASPs, OICs and Inspectors were very busy with organizing this event to distribute gifts and financial scholarships to identified child victims who were recruited to FPUC. Under the leadership of their DIG D. W. Prathapasinghe, these police officers had already done a great deal of groundwork identifying more than 500 child victims and local sponsors for these children from their respective areas and accompanying them to Sujatha Vidyalaya. Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva participated as the chief guest.

This was an unusual public event for me because during my long-tenure in various parts of Sri Lanka as a member of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service, I considered police officers as tough and rigid individual who only associated themselves with work involving 'policing'. I had never seen them behave with such compassion, flexibility, and warmth and involve in this type of social programs.

As a social scientist involved in applied social research in several countries, I highly value this social intervention in several aspects. First, it is a great service for these children without parental support, at least as an immediate relief for them. Second, it can be an effective approach to protect these unprotected and vulnerable children from being delinquents and law offenders.

Third, it is a rare social experiment, attempting to use power of an existing state agency outside their usual sphere of work. Finally, it is also an experiment to identify and establish replicable and sustainable procedures for the implementation of this type of social interventions.

Children grow with parents. Children learn and acquire behaviours through interactions with parents. That is, children's behaviours are learned with in the family and carry over to their interactions with others outside the family in communities and schools. Their psychological resources and mental health are also developed and enhanced by love, affection, warmth and care provided by their parents. Children who experience supportive, warm and affectionate parents' behaviours will feel cared for, loved, and have esteemed feelings that may be internalized. Conversely, in the absence of parents and effective parenting, a child may regress from the display of trivial aversive behaviours to behaviours inflicting harm on people or property.

Very often, child victims of crime, abuse and disasters live with their single mothers. Single-parent family condition may amplify the deleterious effect of early victimization of these children. In general, female-headed families disproportionately experience more economic and social disadvantages. Single mothers experience more stressful circumstances and economic pressure and less social support than married mothers. Moreover, they may experience impaired mental and physical health.

These disadvantaged and distressed mothers lack effective parenting skills and are more hostile and assertive towards their children. Developmental research has demonstrated that children who are orphans or from single-parent families show impaired mental and physical health, and are involved in aggressive and rejecting relationships with peers and teachers. Poor social relationships at school not only accelerate further development of antisocial behaviours, but also decrease the opportunities to benefit from educational and social opportunities. Thus, children from single-parent families are at higher risk of being mental casualties, delinquents and law offenders.

DIG Prathapasinghe has clearly identified the association among troubled families, child victimization and youth delinquency. He has acquired this understanding through his long-term interactions and experiences with juvenile law offenders and their families. He has attempted to disseminate these facts to his stewards and colleagues and mobilize them to retard this process and protect child victims. He also expects to plan sessions to make single parents and primary care givers of these children develop their parenting skills. In addition, social support has been shown to have beneficial influence on mental and physical health of deprived single mothers.

We are used to viewing police officers as unfriendly, rigid and powerful individuals. If they become kind, friendly, warm, and flexible through gaining this knowledge and through cognition, their power can be used as a great resource in this type of endeavour. It seems that DIG Prathapasinghe and his army of officers are trying to accomplish this. They are trying to use their well-established power network in the region to influence resourceful citizens and initiate a province-wide program to support child victims. He has mobilized his stewards to identify child victims and sponsors who are willing to provide resources. So far, this initiative has shown promising results. There is no dearth of local sponsors in the region. These activists have realized the challenge and constrains they have been facing with regard to the sustainable implementation of these newly established institutions. It may go beyond their implementing capacity.

Although they are capable of initiating these types of programmes and setting up institutions by acquiring and pooling resources, they are experiencing difficulties in day-to-day management task. They expect to transfer this task of long-term management to existing strong participatory institutions such as Bhodi Arakshaka Sabha, YMBA, and Sarvodaya, once the programme is set up and launched with adequate resources. This would be an important integration of power between state agency and local participation. It may well be an institutional building model for other social interventions.

Finally, this is a timely social intervention. Tsunami has produced more than 4,000 unprotected children who have lost at least one parent. Tsunami has also aggravated socio-economic problems of the poor, in particular of single mothers. Their houses have been washed-off. Their livelihood has been destroyed.

Their family problems have increased. In short, tsunami has amplified the hardships of single parent families and also increased the number of such families. This situation highlights the importance of social intervention such as 'Protection of Unprotected Children'. I expect to see this initiative growing as a country-wide successful protection program for unprotected children including, tsunami child victims.