A/HRC/11/7 page 16 unaccompanied children should not be detained because of migration-related conditions; States should therefore include alternative measures to detention and express the priority of these measures in their legislation. Subsequently, States should develop public policies which ensure the effective enforcement of these alternative measures by competent authorities, both administrative and judicial. 61. Any detention order should justify the reasons for not applying alternative measures, and the place of detention should be chosen for the child’s integral protection; they should not be detained in prisons or with adults. Child protection approaches should be at the core of the goals and functions of detention institutions/centres, and include the realization of such rights as education, health care, recreation, consular assistance, guardian protection and legal representation, among others. Furthermore, detention centres should be managed by childhood protection officers who have received training on children’s rights. 62. Migration-related detention of children should not be justified on the basis of maintaining the family unit (for example, detention of children with their parents when all are irregular migrants). As UNICEF and other experts have stressed, detention of children will never be in their best interests.39 Hence, the ideal utilization of a rights-based approach would imply adopting alternative measures for the entire family; States should therefore develop policies for placing the entire family in alternative locations to closed detention centres. 63. Some countries make distinctions among children (for instance, children above 12 years of age) with regard to detention policy. In such cases, children over 12 years of age are detained in detention centres, while those under 12 are placed in protection centres for children. Such a practice should be considered an unlawful interpretation of article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Furthermore, adolescents should not be treated as adults. 64. A number of countries still consider the breach of migration law a criminal offence (for example, in cases of irregular entry, lack of residence permit, using an expired residence authorization or unauthorized re-entry after a deportation and re-entry prohibition decision). Furthermore, since in most countries migration laws lack a children’s rights perspective, the criminalization of irregular migration applies also to children. 65. For this reason, it is important to stress that the criminalization of irregular migration leads to human rights violations and to recall the recommendations made by several human rights 39 See UNICEF Australia, Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention, written submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2003, Summary of Recommendations; STEPS consulting social study for the European Parliament, “The conditions in centres for third country national (detention camps, open centres as well as transit centres and transit zones), with a particular focus on provisions and facilities for persons with special needs in the 25 EU member states.”