A/HRC/31/72 society and the victim) and encourage the use of alternative measures, such as release on bail or personal recognizance, ensuring that minorities are afforded the same conditions as other offenders. 2. Detention of minority women and girls 62. States should fully implement standards set forth in the Bangkok Rules to respond to the distinct needs and multiple forms of discrimination that minority women and girls in prisons may face. That includes assessment of their access to gender- and culturally relevant programmes and services in a wide range of aspects of the prison regime, such as health care, rehabilitation programmes and visiting rights. Prison authorities shall provide comprehensive programmes and services that address these needs, in consultation with minority women prisoners themselves, and the relevant communities, ensuring that pre- and post-release services are appropriate and accessible to minority women prisoners. 63. Prison services must provide for the full range of needs of children in prison with their mothers, whether medical, physical or psychological. As these children are not prisoners, they should not be treated as such. The Rules also require special provisions to be made for mothers prior to admission, so they can organize alternative childcare for children left outside places of detention. 3. Detention of children 64. In compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children must be detained strictly as a measure of last resort, in exceptional circumstances, and for the shortest appropriate period of time. Alternatives to detention should be given preference. In the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules) are set out a variety of non-custodial options for children facing criminal charges, including “diversion” from detention, which keeps children in or channels them into age-appropriate processes or programmes in the community instead. In accordance with the recommendations of Committee on the Rights of the Child, the minimum age of criminal liability should start at age 18.4 65. States should ascertain whether juveniles from religious, ethnic, national or linguistic minority communities are incarcerated at a disproportionately higher rate than their representation in the overall population. In such cases, they should create and implement robust crime prevention programmes providing alternative measures to incarceration, focusing on rehabilitation while emphasizing imprisonment as a last resort. D. Judicial proceedings and sentencing 66. Whatever the character or customs of a court, States must ensure their full compliance with international human rights standards, especially equality before the law, and the guarantee of a fair trial by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal under the rule of law. 67. States should ensure that accused minority persons receive competent legal assistance at all stages of the judicial proceedings, including free-of-charge assistance, without discrimination, particularly where imprisonment or the death penalty is a possible sentence. 4 12 See Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 10 (2007) on children’s right in juvenile justice.