Children’s Rights and the Criminal Protection of Minors

The development of the criminal law protection of minors relates to the rise of children’s rights. Even
today, this area of law exerts one of the most powerful effects on juvenile criminal justice. It also
serves as a filter through which the quality of the regulations regarding minor offenders and victims
can be measured. Therefore, the study examines the topic of children’s rights, primarily its evaluative
aspect. It discusses the facts related to the suppressing of attacks against minors and the rules
for juvenile offenders in the complex review of the criminal law rules affecting minors. Common
historical influences play an important role in the development of the criminal policy of Central
and East-Central European countries. Belonging to the Soviet era and the socialist state system
provided a common ideological framework for the attitude toward young offenders and for defining
the framework of, for example, parental rights and educational tools. The political change in each
country caused a serious social cataclysm, which sometimes induced the development of a more
marked penal policy and the need for more decisive action against juvenile offenders. Meanwhile,
international documents played an important role in the spread of new alternative or community
sanctions. The accession to the Council of Europe and later to the EU brought the noted countries
back into a common framework.
The study focuses on the CEE-countries, and aims to provide a general overview, from a historical
perspective, of the development of children’s rights and criminal justice.

KEYWORDS: children’s rights, criminal policy, juvenile justice, criminal policy tools, CEE countries