Troubled teenagers will be placed in good hands

A bill on the need to provide children in difficult life situations with mentors has been submitted to the State Duma. In order to revive the “entire institute of folk pedagogy,” the authors of the initiative propose to create a register of mentors based on the Dobro.RF information system and the GIS “Prevention” (the latter will contain information about juvenile offenders). The decision to appoint a mentor, replace him or cancel the appointment will be made by the commission on affairs of minors and the protection of their rights.

The bill in question was introduced by the head of the Duma Committee on Youth Policy, Artem Metelev, and the first deputy head of the Committee for the Protection of Family, Paternity, Maternity and Childhood, Tatyana Butskaya, as well as senators. The explanatory note states that the document “was developed in order to implement the order of the President of the Russian Federation of February 12, 2024 and is aimed at ensuring the participation of mentors, charitable, and volunteer organizations in preventive work with minors prone to deviant behavior.”

Today, more than 420 thousand minors are on preventive registration, Mr. Metelev noted. Teenage crime, he emphasized, is decreasing, but repeat crime is increasing: more than a third of those who have committed a crime again violate the law. “An analysis of the causes of teenage crime shows that one of the main reasons is idleness and abandonment of children. In Soviet times, an entire institute of folk pedagogy and mentoring was created – public educators. In a number of regions, this practice of mentoring is still in effect, and it has proven itself successfully: after working with a mentor and participating in social projects, teenagers are removed from the register and return to normal life. We propose to legislate this practice and scale it up, to create an institute of mentoring in the prevention system, the goal of which is to give a second chance to thousands of children who need such support,” explained Artem Metelev.

The profile committee clarified that the register of mentors will be formed on the basis of the unified information system “Dobro.RF” and the GIS “Prevention”. Those wishing to become mentors will be able to submit an application to be included in the register, and the Commission on Minors’ Affairs (MAC), using the GIS “Prevention”, will refer them to wards. Mentors will report to the commission on the work done. The decision on their appointment or replacement will be made by the Control Committee. The necessary rules and criteria for making such decisions will be approved by the Ministry of Education.

Kommersant contacted the Ministry of Education for details, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Director of the charitable organization “Mentors for Children” Nina Vorontsova (the foundation implements a program of professionally organized individual mentoring for children and adolescents in Russia “Big Brothers Big Sisters”) agrees that mentoring is the most effective way to socialize a child and solve complex teenage crises. The expansion of the range of charitable and volunteer organizations to work with such children, in her opinion, is a positive sign. “At the stage of change that teenagers go through both physiologically and emotionally, they need a stable, confident adult who will listen and support. But will there be enough response from those willing to take on this difficult role? And the issue of paying for mentoring will not solve this problem. If the principle of voluntariness is violated, trust will not arise, which is the basis on which new models of behavior are perceived,” says Nina Vorontsova. She fears that mentors without appropriate training and professional support will be unprepared for work. “Here we need more infrastructural support, in particular, to expand the available psychological assistance to families, because the problem of deviant behavior is not only in children, but also in the family as a whole,” says Ms. Vorontsova. “Involve a business that, together with corporate mentors, will help create for children useful focuses on the profession.”

The head of the working group on the psychological well-being of the population under the Committee on Family Protection, Issues of Paternity, Maternity and Childhood of the State Duma, Alexei Bogachev, suggested that such mentors could also be veterans of the Northern Military District: “Two types of contacts are important for adolescents – contacts of the reference group, that is peers, and contact with a significant adult who will become an example and model of behavior for him. With the right selection, training and support of these types of mentors, CBO participants can be extremely effective.”

The Youth Policy Committee clarified that the GIS “Prevention” mentioned in the project is planned to be created on the basis of the AIS “Prevention”. This automated information system in the field of protecting the rights of minors and preventing their antisocial and illegal behavior is already operating in pilot mode. 44 constituent entities of the Russian Federation are taking part in the testing. She developed the platform of the ANO “Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment”, established on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation in October 2018. The organization is engaged in IT developments “aimed at identifying content related to suicidal behavior, the spread of a criminal subculture and other destructive trends in the youth digital environment.” The main effect of the creation of the AIS “Prevention,” as its creators say, will be the accumulation of information in the field of prevention of neglect and juvenile delinquency and interdepartmental exchange of information.

Currently, commissions and departments for juvenile affairs already have information about persons prone to crime, says lawyer, founder and CEO of the vvCube consulting group Vadim Tkachenko. Therefore, he does not see much sense in the initiative. “The creation of such a system does not contradict the laws, since its use will make it possible to timely transmit and receive data about persons prone to crime, as well as to suppress such violations,” comments Mr. Tkachenko. “The most important thing is that this will allow us to work with such teenagers even with their moving to other regions, moving from one educational institution to another or changing places of work, that is, do not lose sight of them.” As for the protection of personal data, “leaks are, of course, possible”: “It all depends on the tools used to protect information.”

Natalia Kostarnova