Prevention, protection and prosecution is the mantra that the Minors' Brigade is adopting to fight the scourge of child prostitution that has begun to surface in the country.

“We have already handled 13 cases of child prostitution and have made 28 arrests over the 2007 and 2008 period and have a number of other cases in the pipeline. Unlike in traditional policing methods of detecting adult prostitution, children are not found roaming streets soliciting clients, nor do they have access to hotels and rented rooms or gain admission to nightclubs.'So the question is where do they operate from?'. The Minors' Brigade places a lot of expectations on the public when it comes to detecting child prostitution because this type of criminal activity is not as visible as other crimes. We have been holding a number of meetings with the community, sensitising people to the dangers and consequences of child prostitution.

One may see suspicious activities going on, such as people from outside the area coming and going to a place where there are children. Anything fishy should be reported,” they say.

“We then send out a team to investigate and maintain regular patrols in the area. To be able to prosecute we need to secure evidence and to do this we must catch them red handed. The child is then taken into custody and referred to a psychologist and we also throw a protection net around him. A climate of trust and security must be established to allow the child to tell us what has happened,” says the officer.

The Minors' Brigade spends a lot of their resources to curb truancy and have regular crackdowns in certain areas as they feel that truancy unnecessarily places young kids at risk. They add that most kids that are prone to be lured into prostitution are from broken families. “They have no guides, they are affected by peer pressure, or it may be down to a lack of sex education,” says the Minors' Brigade.