“The police work with a lot of children, not all of them are offenders,” said Blagorodna Makeva, Deputy Director of the General Directorate of National Police at the final event, part of a project for strengthening youth protection and juvenile delinquency prevention in Bulgaria, co-financed by the Swiss government.

Thanks to this 5-year programme, in 2016 and 2017, more than 200 children’s police stations were set up nationwide. At them, more than 4,500 children aged 8 to 12 completed a special training programme involving personal safety and adequate behavior in critical situations, intolerance of acts of antisocial behavior, knowledge of their civil rights and obligations. The information regarding the joint work between children and police has been posted to a designated web page on children’s safety, part of the website of the Interior Ministry. It was developed by school children and offers useful tips to children and parents, as well as to experts working with children. According to Senior Commissioner Blagorodna Makeva, creating children’s police stations, as well as updating the National Police training program “Work of the Police in Schools”, part of the Bulgarian-Swiss project, are already yielding results:

“We are seeing an 11 percent drop in the number of children who have been victims of crime, and 9.6 percent less minor offenders. This is the result of the systematic efforts of our colleagues across the country, and the additional elements of the 5-year Bulgarian-Swiss project.”

The funding for the project, which is part of the Bulgarian-Swiss Cooperation Programme on safety, amounts to 730,000 Swiss francs, 15 percent of which is covered by the Bulgarian side. As a result of the joint efforts of the General Directorate National Police of Bulgaria and the police academy in the Swiss town of Savatan, a national information database was created registering children in conflict with the law and victims of crime. Assistance has also been provided for the technical renovation of the juvenile delinquency prevention divisions in the country. As part of the juvenile delinquency prevention training programmes, police experts have delivered more than 8,000 lectures to more than 140,000 children from all over Bulgaria.

“Besides first aid and police protection for children, one of the training modules at the children’s police station is for road safety. Every year there is one designated day when we arrange empty chairs for the children who have lost their lives in traffic accidents in the country. We are glad to say that children have been really eager to take part in the children’s police stations which are an element of this project. When we questioned more than 7,000 of the participants in the children’s police stations, among them teachers, parents and school-goers, more than 85 percent of the parents said they had seen a change in the behaviour of their children. The teachers also say there is a different in the way the children who took part in the project are behaving, compared to those who did not. That is a very powerful incentive for us to continue our efforts in this direction.”

English: Milena Daynova