CHILD JUSTICE: DIRECTIVE ISSUED ON RANGE OF PROCEDURAL AND OTHER MATTERS

CHILD JUSTICE: DIRECTIVE ISSUED ON RANGE OF PROCEDURAL AND OTHER MATTERS

• 10 July 2026
• Justice & Constitutional Development
• SA Legal Academy

The Department of Justice & Constitutional Development has issued a directive under the 2008 Child Justice Act intended to ensure that its objectives are achieved in the context of:

• diversion
• age-related errors after diversion, and
• the ‘exceptional circumstances that must exist before diversion of a matter in the case of a serious offence’.

Against that backdrop, in addition to erroneous age and diversion-related issues, the directive deals with:

• case withdrawal
• criminal capacity
• prosecuting a child who is 12 years or older but under the age of 14 years
• assessment
• categories of child offenders
• categories of offences
• persons who were children at the time of committing a crime and are now 18 years or older, but under 21 years of age
• persons using children to commit offences
• trial in a child justice court, and
• sentencing.

The directive also:

• makes it mandatory to maintain a register of all persons diverted in terms of the Act, and
• warns that ‘failure by a prosecutor to comply … may lead (to) or result in disciplinary steps being taken’.

Please click the link below for more information:

• directive

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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