KAP Study: Police Interaction With Children - August 2014 (Magenta Consulting report)

This study seeks to detect the challenges faced by the employees of the General Police Inspectorate in Moldova while working with minors and the training they require. For this purpose a survey was conducted, that includes four separate questionnaires for four staff categories that come in contact with minors – the inspectors of the Bureau of Child Security (BCS), district inspectors, criminal prosecution officers and investigation officers. The questionnaires contain questions about child offenders, as well as child witnesses and victims.Thr study revealed systemic deficiencies and looked at the knowledge and attitudes shown by these categories of staff in relation to children. Among the results it could be seen for instance, the BCS inspectors face no difficulties in communicating with children, while the other categories answered that establishing a psychological contact is a difficult task for them. In the case of BCS, given that its staff communicate more often with children, receive more training and cooperate often with relevant NGOs and other institutions dealing with child protection, they are more open to the specific characteristics of the children who come in contact with the criminal justice.