PUNISHMENT OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Substantial reform of Criminal Justice system of Bosnia and Herzegovina took place in November 1998. The main inovation was considered to be an introduction of a set of educational recommendations as an alternative ways of reaction to juveniles' crime. If we consider that juvenile imprisonment is mostly retributive in its' nature, educational measures rehabilitative, than there is no doubt that educational recommendations should be understood as measures that are restorative. Introduction of these recommendations, although presented and accepted as a glorious inovation that is in complience with various international legal instruments related to rights of a child and juvenile offender, unfortunately did not find its way to practice of our courts. Due to the fact that there has been a lot of published literature on juvenile imprisonment and educational measures for juvenile offenders, we will focus our presentation on the purpose, precondictions for imposition and structure of educational recommendations as a new way of reaction to crime in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Afterwords, we will analyze the imposition of educational recommendations on juvenile offenders during 1999-2002 period; and try to point out some potential problems related to low rate of imposition of these recommendations and propose some solutions to overcome the problem.