Editorial | Correction centres are crucibles of chaos. Still, they are redeemable.

In January, a skirmish broke out in the correction centre in Bhaktapur, leaving eight juveniles and 22 police personnel injured. This followed arson, clashes and vandalism. As a result, all male juveniles were hastily transferred to other facilities across the Kathmandu Valley, their previous home rendered uninhabitable. The smoke that billowed from the Sanothimi correction centre was a searing indictment of the very concept of rehabilitation in Nepal. That incident is not an isolated one. Similar cases of abject failure of detention centres, rooted in institutional neglect, break into the news cycle every month. In August last year, the same facility was the site of a violent clash involving nearly 300 juvenile inmates following the mysterious death of a minor, an event that left 35 people injured and saw 221 juveniles flee into the night. From Banke to Birgunj, the story remains the same: ‘Correction centres’ that have morphed into warehouses for human misery, where the air is thick with resentment and the floors are overcrowded with the discarded futures of some Nepali youth. The ‘correction’ promised by the law is a cruel mirage. While the National Human Rights Commission keeps on monitoring the aftermath of clash after clash, the grim reality is that these facilities resemble prisons more than reform homes. The law dictates that these children be kept under supervision to ensure their educational, intellectual and psychological development. Instead, they get suffocating