Children of less than 18 years old are held 'at least overnight' in police stations, prisons and jails, in conditions that permit at least visual or auditory communication between children and adult inmates, regardless of the reason for the child being held there (suspected or convicted offender, destitution, child of adult detainee, war prisoner). Contact with adult inmates may have actual or potentially harmful results for the children. A slow decision-making process and a bureaucratic legal framework may prevent a prompt placement or release.
Concern with the detention of children with adults tends to focus on the dangers of direct contact between juvenile and adult prisoners, and the well-known forms of abuses facilitated by such contact: physical violence, sexual abuse, theft, use of children as servants, exposure to criminal lifestyles and values, and the like. But the right of children to be detained in separate facilities is intended not merely to avoid such contact, but also to ensure that juveniles deprived of their liberty are cared for in a humane and physical environment designed to meet their special physical, social and psychological needs.