Towards a relevant and sustainable juvenile justice system in Ghana.

Since 2010, there have been series of discussions by stakeholders to revamp Ghana's current juvenile justice system to make it more relevant and sustainable within Ghana's domestic context. These efforts led to the adoption of the Justice for Children Policy (J4CP) by cabinet in 2015. Using a qualitative analysis of secondary data, this preliminary paper assesses whether the J4CP enhances Ghana's quest for a relevant, domesticated, efficient, and sustainable juvenile justice system with Ghana's socio-cultural context and the SDG standards as the standard of measurement. The paper argues that the J4CP embodies elements of relevance, affordability, accessibility, inclusivity, and sustainability. However, the new policy also faces formidable technical, philosophical, and other resource challenges. Consequently, the paper concludes that the J4CP is only a good first step towards creating a domesticated and relevant juvenile justice system in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]