Invest in juvenile homes
A rape or murder committed by a 12-year-old or a 16-year-old is no less heinous than the same crime committed by an adult. It is a fallacy that the Juvenile Justice Act as it stands now prevents young people who commit such crimes from being punished. What the current JJ Act ensures is that young people who are accused of crimes will not be tried in adult courts, or jailed in adult jails if convicted; instead they are tried by Juvenile Justice Boards and if convicted, serve punishment in juvenile correctional homes. This is because housing young offenders with adult criminals will further expose them to crime, rather than wean them away from it.
Scientific studies show that in adolescents the part of the brain that controls the ability to plan, take decisions, correctly assess risks and set long-term goals is not fully developed. Any parent of a teenager will know that youngsters between 16-18 years of age are especially vulnerable to peer pressure, and prone to risky, impulsive behaviour with little care for consequences. This being the case, “stern laws” that fail to deter even adults from committing rape or murder will certainly not deter youngsters who are naturally rash.
Where do youngsters learn to rape and kill? Ninety-four per cent of rapes happen inside households or other private places, by trusted persons. Two out of every three children in India face sexual abuse or physical abuse in families and schools. And kids from poor households face even worse violence where they work: as truck drivers’ assistants, in dhabas, and as household help. If and when they come into the hands of the police, kids from poor households face torture and rape in police custody. Even inside the juvenile homes, violence, malnutrition, cruelty and rape, even by the care-providers, are rampant.
Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer said that adult jails are where young offenders acquire “PhDs in crime”. The US’ department of justice, in a 2011 report, cited six large-scale studies that found youth who were transferred to adult jails were generally found to have re-offended “sooner and more frequently” than those retained in the juvenile justice system, because of “the direct and indirect effects of criminal conviction on the life chances of transferred youth, the lack of access to rehabilitative resources in the adult corrections system, and the hazards of association with older criminal ‘mentors’”. As a result of this experience, between 2005 and 2010, 15 US states enacted laws to prevent young people from entering the adult criminal justice system.
If, as is proposed, Juvenile Justice Boards can decide whether or not to transfer the young accused to an adult court, such decisions are likely to be arbitrary, based mostly on public outcry in some cases. The decision to transfer can create prejudice against the accused.
If we want to reduce crimes by young people, we should invest in reforming juvenile correctional homes so that the care and effort needed to transform juvenile offenders is actually provided.
Kavita Krishnan is secretary, All-India Progressive Women’s Association
Crime must decide punishment
The proposed amendments to the Juvenile Justice Act protect and strengthen child rights, whilst correcting the imbalance of punishment for a small but rapidly rising number of heinous crimes, including rape and murder, committed by offenders aged 16-18. The existing Juvenile Justice Act treats all offenders below 18, whether aged 17 or 12, as equally lacking mental and intellectual capabilities to fully understand and be responsible for their actions.
This abrupt distinction between child and adult at the cut-off age of 18 fundamentally ignores the gradual biological and psychological development of consciousness and responsibility in teenagers. We stipulate different ages for permitting/ensuring compulsory school attendance, child work and employment, marriage, alcohol consumption and the exercise of franchise, recognising that the development of capability is staggered.
Yet, we uniformly apply the provisions of the JJ Act across all ages below 18. At the upper end of the age range of the JJ Act, most visibly in the case of heinous acts, punishment falls woefully short of the severity of crime. This unwittingly signals impunity to those youngsters who are potentially in conflict with the law, and who need to be taught responsibility as much as they need to be cared and provided for.
The proposed amendments to the JJ Act directly address these gaps by providing for stricter punishments in line with laws for adults for 16-18 year olds. Any such prosecution will not be automatic, but based on the studied recommendation of Juvenile Justice Boards, necessarily comprising experts in social and child psychology, and including women. The JJB is best placed to judge the mental and intellectual capabilities of juvenile offenders and decide whether or not to refer them to a court meant for adults.
Several countries, including the UK and the US, allow for juveniles to be tried under regular penal laws in the case of grave offences and under specific conditions.
In addition to the safeguards ensured by the presence of the JJB in referring select cases of heinous crimes to regular courts, the proposed amendments to the JJ Act expressly preclude the possibility of under-18s being awarded life sentence or the death sentence.
The other provisions of the Act respond to long-standing demands of child rights and child protection groups. Notably, the provision to encourage foster care as an alternative for children in difficult circumstances is a necessary move after decades of failure to turn around the decaying, predatory and ineffective environs of our care and reform homes.
Further, the JJ Act focuses on crimes that children specifically face, and for which there is often no legal remedy — ragging, corporal punishment and the use of children in selling/peddling liquor and narcotics have been specifically added to the list of offences. Informed by a sensitive and considered approach to children’s changing requirements and capabilities, the amendments to the JJ Act are a strong push for the welfare and the rights of the child.
Sanjayaditya Kaul is a spokesperson for the BJP
