The sentences that are handed out by Spanish juvenile judge Emilio Calatayud would in many courtrooms sound like a joke.
But the 48-year-old magistrate has soared to national fame thanks to his eccentric sentences, which have reduced juvenile delinquency in the southern city of Granada.
Juveniles convicted of beating up a homeless man are ordered to distribute food aid to beggars. A suspect charged with setting a house on fire is instructed to assist a fire brigade.
A motorcyclist caught without compulsory insurance is told to draw a comic about the incident and visit victims of traffic accidents at a hospital.
Calatayud, the son of a judge, has not forgotten his restless youth, during which he nearly turned to crime himself, the daily El Mundo reported.
The popular magistrate now claims to have a good understanding of the causes of juvenile delinquency, and says almost 80 percent of the youths whose cases he handles are rehabilitated.
"People must pay for what they do, but that is not enough," says Calatayud, who deals with some 800 cases every year, from pickpockets to murderers.
A reckless driver, for instance, was ordered to patrol the streets with a traffic policeman for 100 hours. A Senegalese immigrant who sold pirated CDs was "sentenced" to learning Spanish.
A young computer hacker who saddled several companies with thousands of euros' worth of damage was ordered by the judge to give 100 classes to students of information technology.
Calatayud usually offers such possibilities as alternatives to internment and other punitive measures or as complementary to them.
"He opened my eyes," said Andres, 20, who is determined not to commit any more robberies after Calatayud "sentenced" him to finishing school and getting a driving license.
Justice should not be based on a spirit of vengeance or condescension, says Calatayud, who works in collaboration with psychologists and sociologists.
Spanish legislation on juvenile crime has been criticized as lax, but it has produced good results when applied by Calatayud, whose office is filled with gifts from grateful parents, El Mundo reported.
The likes of Calatayud are laughed at by champions of tough justice, but experts say such an approach often makes sense in the case of juvenile delinquents.
"There are many types of offences, such as thefts in supermarkets, which people stop committing as they grow older, but if you place those adolescents into the wrong system, you turn them into criminals," penal law professor Esther Gimenez-Salinas told the daily La Vanguardia.
She tells the story of a young man who was ordered to work in the garden of an old lady whom he had pushed on the street, breaking her leg.
"When the criminal gets to know the victim outside court, not as an enemy, he repents," Gimenez-Salinas added.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS