Johannesburg — THE Department of Justice has said the Child Justice Act will be implemented next month, despite initial funding problems.

The act aims to ensure children in conflict with the law are not exposed to adult offenders. It also provides that children be put into rehabilitation programmes immediately after being arrested, rather than after they have been tried. The act was signed last year by Kgalema Motlanthe when he was still acting president.

The department requested R58,1m from the Treasury, a budget it said would help to set up needed infrastructure for the 2010-11 financial year. Only R30m was approved.

Department of Justice spokesman Tlali Tlali said the three departments involved in the implementation of the act - police, social development and correctional services - would each contribute the remaining R27,1m to address the shortfall.

The department had budgeted R9m for the appointment of 111 dedicated child justice court clerks, R1m for the provision of training and support to the provinces, R10,6m to appoint 20 district court magistrates, and R10m for the appointment of 30 child justice prosecutors.

It also budgeted R10m for the appointment of 60 Legal Aid attorneys and R17,5m for the provision of rehabilitation services, especially in rural areas.

Ngoako Ramatlhodi, chairman of Parliament's portfolio committee on justice and constitutional development, said all relevant departments were working on adjusting their budgets to accommodate the act.

"We have already dealt with (most) elements in the act. We are ready to implement it next month," Ramatlhodi said.

The act was meant to apply to child offenders aged between 10 and 18 years, Ramatlhodi said.

Jacqui Gallinetti, senior lecturer in law at the University of the Western Cape, said: "With the current justice system, children who are in conflict with the law are treated the same way as adults. They are prosecuted at adult courts without proper assessments by probation officers."

Gallinetti, who is also a member of a Cape Town-based Child Justice Alliance, said: "With the new act, every child who is alleged to have committed an offence while under 18 years of age, will be required to appear at a preliminary inquiry in respect of that offence where he or she must be assessed by a probation officer."

She said the act would ensure that children were imprisoned only as a last resort.

Legal Aid SA said it had been training its practitioners to be ready for when the new act came into operation.

An executive at Legal Aid SA, Patrick Hundermark, said the organisation - which provides legal assistance to about 500 000 people a year who cannot afford private legal representation - assisted about 39 000 children in conflict with the law in its 2008-09 financial year.

"We are training our practitioners on the new aspects of the act. Because every single court in the country is a child justice centre, we will be using the same coverage plan to cater for children in conflict with the law in all courts," Hundermark said.

With Ernest Mabuza