Justice or vengeance?
The position in law in India till the Juvenile Justice Act was enacted first in 1986 and again in 2000, was that any person over the age of 12 years committing an offence notified in the Indian Penal Code is to be prosecuted as an adult (Section 82 and 83). This was also the international norm in democratic countries.
In the late 1970s, a movement developed to treat juveniles as vulnerable to the harsh treatment in a criminal court that may, in fact, turn them into hardcore criminals. Hence, the concept of reformative punishment for juveniles was developed as opposed to retributive punishment for adults on the ground that when a juvenile commits a crime, s/he does not comprehend the ramification of what they were doing.
The United Nations became seized of the problem and a conference was held in Beijing wherein the conference adopted what came to be known as “Beijing Rules”. The idea was to develop a separate criminal code for prosecuting juveniles in a more caring way, with the intention of reforming them. It advocated an age limit but didn’t prescribed one, saying that whatever age is fixed must be subject to the “emotional, mental and intellectual level of the juvenile” not being above that age level. India unconditionally ratified the Beijing Rules and in 1986 enacted the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA), according to which a male juvenile was under the age of 16 and a female below 18 years, without the proviso of maturity level.
But influential NGOs demanded a stricter UN mandate and hence, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was adopted in 1989.
India again ratified it, unconditionally, in 1992 and a new statute, JJA of 2000, was enacted. But the JJA of 2000 did not faithfully implement the UNCRC or the Beijing Rules. Instead, Section 2(k) of the act blandly laid down that a juvenile is any person below the age of 18 years without the UN’s ifs and buts. It also inadvertently left out the words “emotionally, mentally and intellectually mature”. On the contrary, both the Beijing Rules and UNCRC explicitly provide that a juvenile be treated as an adult in a heinous crime if it can be inferred that s/he knew what was being done. It is significant that in liberal democracies such as US and UK, for rapes and murder any offender above the age of 14 is treated as an adult for prosecution. That is what my petition in the Supreme Court is asking the court to do. If I succeed, then the Delhi gangrape case will have tobe reheard, treating the savage accused juvenile as an adult. And then never again will a rapist or murderer be considered as a juvenile. The writer is a
BJP leader The United States, due to popular demand, chose to apply “adult time for adult crime” doctrine on its children. An angry and panicked citizenry was relieved hoping that America will now be free from juvenile crimes. But what happened thereafter is a lesson for all of us. American prisons kept swelling with increasing youth population, contaminating incarcerated youths beyond any possibility of reform. Dilulio later regretted his calculations but it was too late. It’s against this backdrop, that a process of reversal towards a pragmatic approach started setting in.
Building on the society’s concerns following the horrific gangrape case of December 2012, the juvenile justice law of India is being targeted. I see exaggeration, misinformation, myths and panic being used in order to manipulate public opinion. Let us take a quick look at things as they are.
Our country of 1.24 billion people has never recorded more than 33,000 crimes by juveniles in any given year. Share of juvenile crime in total crimes in India is around one per cent. Laws governing juveniles have existed in India for the past 163 years and have been consistent on the point that children need a supportive treatment so that they can come out of crime. The philosophy of juvenile justice is to look at circumstances and environment which lead children into crime and then to give them a second chance with adequate assistance at every level to help them move away from crime. We can always have this easy way of getting rid of children by throwing them in jails, but will this really prevent children from getting into crime? At a time when implementation of Juvenile Justice Act and other child protection laws is receiving momentum at every level of governance in India, it is extremely irresponsible to misinform public on juvenile crime and its solution. The writer is an advocate who has worked extensively on the cases
concerning juveniles