6.1 Release of Juveniles without Bail where there is no Guardian At initial appearance in court, if a child has no parents or guardians or if these are unable to be located, the child can be released into the custody of the Department, and the Department will house the child at one of its Children’s Centres. Probation Officers would need to attend to the police station or to the court, as the case may be, and take custody of the child. During the #ZimShutDown arrests, the police, particularly in Harare and Chitungwiza, did not engage the Department of Social Welfare, despite also not informing the children’s parents and guardians of the children’s arrest. Fortunately, eventually all the children were legally represented, and the parents and guardians were notified by the lawyers and attended court to receive the children. Thus, no children were released into the hands of the DSW on account of unavailability of parents and guardians. 6.2 Probation Officers’ Reports In all matters before the courts involving children in conflict with the law, Probation Officers are required to conduct an inquiry and then come up with a Probation Officer’s report. The report, a social and psychoanalysis of the child, should entail the age of the child, personal circumstances and upbringing of the child, the child’s educational circumstances, the nature of the offence, comments about the child’s capacity to commit the particular offence, circumstances surrounding the commission of the offence, attitude of the child towards the offence, and the recommended intervention that would rehabilitate and reform the child, among other pertinent issues. The Probation Officer’s report will not bind the court; Probation Officers’ reports are not definitive, and they do not necessarily direct the court as to what it should do. Rather, they are part of the evidence and information before the presiding officer to allow the court to be in a better position to exercise its discretion in an informed manner. The reports serve as critical and useful guides to the Magistrate or Judge in deciding on the appropriate approach, including the appropriate intervention or sentence. Importantly, the reports bring an extra-legal dimension in the assessment of the juvenile in conflict with the law and the influences surrounding that child, including criminogenic influences. The law on juvenile justice considers the empirical, agreed upon and acceptable socio-economic, political and sociological influences surrounding children committing offences, and the consequent need to bring back such children into ideal citizenship. This was captured by Justice Amy Tsanga in the High Court case of S v Masuku HH 10615 wherein she stated that: “[T]he reality is that law on its own in such instances cannot be the panacea to problems that have deep social contexts. Law does not operate in a vacuum”. Justice Tsanga also highlighted in S v FM (A Juvenile) HH 112-15 that: “It is also the responsibility of all officials involved both judicial and nonjudicial to be thorough in their assessments so as to give each accused child a real chance at being justly treated”. Many children were tried and sentenced in the aftermath of the January protests without probation officers' reports. This protection mechanism was dispensed with. As a result, the courts that dispensed with the need for the reports treated children in a manner that disregarded the legal and statutory protections accorded to children. In those cases where Probation Officers’ reports were prepared, some reports were furnished to the courts timeously, while in some instances the DSW cited lack of transport funds to take the reports to court. In some instances, delays in furnishing the reports delayed commencement of trials. For instance, at Tredgold Magistrates Court in Bulawayo, cases of 9 children charged with looting were postponement by a month to allow for Probation Officers’ reports to be furnished to court. Thought it is required and desired that a Probation Officer’s report is presented before a court dealing with a child, it is not fatal to a case to 31 ‘Hear them Cry ’ – An Analysis of State Violence Against Children During the January 2019 Protests