juvenile delinquency in india essay

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

The PMC website is updating on October 15, 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Indian J Community Med
• v.47(4); Oct-Dec 2022

Juvenile’s Delinquent Behavior, Risk Factors, and Quantitative Assessment Approach: A Systematic Review

Madhu kumari gupta.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

Subrajeet Mohapatra

Prakash kumar mahanta.

1 Department of Clinical Psychology, Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Science, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

Background:

Not only in India but also worldwide, criminal activity has dramatically increasing day by day among youth, and it must be addressed properly to maintain a healthy society. This review is focused on risk factors and quantitative approach to determine delinquent behaviors of juveniles.

Materials and Methods:

A total of 15 research articles were identified through Google search as per inclusion and exclusion criteria, which were based on machine learning (ML) and statistical models to assess the delinquent behavior and risk factors of juveniles.

The result found ML is a new route for detecting delinquent behavioral patterns. However, statistical methods have used commonly as the quantitative approach for assessing delinquent behaviors and risk factors among juveniles.

Conclusions:

In the current scenario, ML is a new approach of computer-assisted techniques have potentiality to predict values of behavioral, psychological/mental, and associated risk factors for early diagnosis in teenagers in short of times, to prevent unwanted, maladaptive behaviors, and to provide appropriate intervention and build a safe peaceful society.

I NTRODUCTION

Juvenile delinquency is a habit of committing criminal offenses by an adolescent or young person who has not attained 18 years of age and can be held liable for his/her criminal acts. Clinically, it is described as persistent manners of antisocial behavior or conduct by a child/adolescent repeatedly denies following social rules and commits violent aggressive acts against the law and socially unacceptable. The word delinquency is derived from the Latin word “delinquere” which described as “de” means “away” and “linquere” as “to leaveor to abandon.” Minors who are involved in any kind of offense such as violence, gambling, sexual offenses, rape, bullying, stealing, burglary, murder, and other kinds of anti-social behaviors are known as juvenile delinquents. Santrock (2002) defined “an adolescent who breaks the law or engages in any criminal behavior which is considered as illegal is called juvenile delinquent.”[ 1 ] In India, Juvenile Justice (J. J.-Care and protection of Children) Act of 2000 stated that “an individual whether a boy/girl, who is under 18 years of age and has committed an offense, referred or convicted by the juvenile court have considered a juvenile delinquent.”

P REVALENCE R ATE : J UVENILE D ELINQUENCY IN I NDIA

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (India, 2019), statistical data of crimes in India show that overall, 38,685 juveniles were placed under arrest in 32,235 cases, among 35,214 juveniles were taken into custody under cases of IPC and 3471 juveniles were arrested under cases of special and local laws (SLL) during 2019. About 75.2% of the total convicted juveniles (29,084 out of 38,685) were apprehended under both IPC and SLL belonging to the age group 16–18 years. In 2019, 32,235 juvenile cases involving and recorded, indicating a slight increment of 2.0% over 2018 (31,591 cases). The rate of crime also indicates a slight increase from 7.1 (2018) to 7.2 (2019).[ 2 ] The total registered cases against juvenile delinquents are calculated as crime incidence rate per one Lakh population as shown in Figure 1 .

The graphical view of registered cases against Juveniles in conflict with law under Indian penal code and special and local laws crimes during 2014–2019 of all the State (s) and union territories of India Sources: Crime in India National (2014-2019), National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, 2019

R ISK -F ACTORS A FFECTING D ELINQUENT B EHAVIOR

Studies identify that multiple risk factors are responsible for delinquent behavior categorized as individual, parental, family, community, society, schools/educational, financial, mental as well as psychological factors of the individual and the family shown in Table 1 . Adolescents involve themselves in various anti-social activities to fulfill their basic needs. Basically, “delinquency” is just a recreational activity for earning money. These risk factors differ from person to person during the early childhood period and very crucial because children, who are involved in any kind of deviant activity at an early stage, have a higher chance to adopt delinquent tendencies chronically.[ 33 ]

Developmental phases, risk-factors and developing delinquent behaviours of the child

Juvenile delinquency is caused by a wide range of factors, such as conflicts in the family, lack of proper family control, residential environmental effects, and movie influence, along with other factors are responsible for delinquent behavior.[ 3 ] Family and environmental factors, namely restrictive behaviors, improper supervision, negligence, criminal activities of parents, improper motivation by peers, fear of peer rejection, poverty, illiteracy, poor educational performance at school, lack of moral education may turn the individual personality into delinquents. Moreover, in the environment, deteriorated neighborhood, direct exposure to violence/fighting (or exposure to violence through media), violence-based movies are considered major risk factors.[ 4 ] In India, a higher level of permissive parenting in low-income families had so many family members and due to economic conditions, the adolescents had pressure to search various income sources to sustain the family, and it has affected parental behavior toward adolescents.[ 5 ] The children who belong to the lower middle-socio-economical class and are rejected by society showed more aggressive behavior.[ 6 ]

Juvenile gang members exhibit significantly higher rates of mental health issues such as conduct disorders, attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorders, antisocial personality disorder, posttraumatic-stress-disorders, and anxiety disorders.[ 7 ] As well as the intellectual level of young offenders is significantly different from nonoffenders. Emotional problems on adolescents are related to delinquent behavior and impulsivity directly associated with antisocial behavior among adolescents.[ 8 ] Poor self-control of adolescents involved them in substance use, affected harmfully, and increased involvements in anti-social activities.[ 9 ] Nonviolent people, who not involved in any gang, are less likely to utilize mental-health services, having lower levels of psychiatric morbidity, namely antisocial personality disorders, psychosis, and anxiety disorders, when compared with the group of violent offenders.[ 10 ]

M ACHINE L EARNING : A N EW Q UANTITATIVE E VALUATION A PPROACH

Machine learning (ML) is belonging to the multidisciplinary field that includes programming, math, and statistics, and as a new and dynamic field that necessitates more study. It is a branch of computer science that emerged through pattern recognition and computational learning theory of artificial intelligence. ML is exploring researches and development of algorithms that can learn and genera tea prediction besides a given set of data through the computer. It is a scope for the study that gives computers the capability to learn without being principally programmed.[ 11 ] Tom M. Mitchell explained ML as “a computer-based program to learn from action of “E” concerning any task of ‘T’s, and some performance evaluates “P,” if its performance on “T,” as assessed by “P,” improves with action of E.”[ 12 ] The goal of ML is to mimic human learning in computers.[ 13 ] Humans learn from their experiences and ML methods learn from data. The user provides a portion of a dataset designated to train by the algorithm. The algorithm creates a model based on the relationships among variables in the dataset, and the remaining dataset is used to validate the ML model. In simple words, ML approach is for risk indicator is meant to magnify the potential of current knowledge.[ 15 ] ML sits at the common frontier of many academic fields, including statistics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering.[ 14 , 17 ] ML models principally categorized into three categories, namely supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement based on their task which they are attempting to accomplish. Supervised learning is relying on a training set where some characteristics of data are known, typically labels or classes, and target to find out the universal rule that maps inputs to outputs. Unsupervised learning has no design to give to the learning algorithm, balance itself to find out the patterns through inputs. In reinforcement, interaction with a dynamic environment happens during which a particular target such as driving a vehicle is performed without a driver principally involved in any activities, namely comparison. In numerous studies, pattern classification approaches based on ML algorithms are used to forecast human beings into various categories by maximizing the distance among data groups. ML generally refers to all actions that train a computer algorithm to determine a complicated pattern of data that is conceivable used for forecast category of membership into a new theme (e.g., individual vs. controls).[ 32 ]

R ATIONAL OF THE S TUDY

In the last decade, various researchers have been attracted to the use of quantitative computer-based techniques for analyzing various psychological and clinical aspects, which have greatly contributed to the area of modern psychology. In this analysis, most of the works are devoted to the use of various quantitative analysis techniques, namely ML and statistical methods which has utilized by the researchers for evaluating various risk and protective factors of juveniles. Henceforth, studies on the application of the ML model for risk-assessment of delinquent behavior on juveniles are limited as compared to other techniques, namely logistic regression. Hence, this review paper may explore the utilization of ML to get an easy and quick assessment on juveniles and helpful for future studies. It may help to determine the most significant risk factors and establishment of a successful treatment program that prevents juveniles from delinquent activities and stops them from recidivism.

In this review, all these studies carried out which has used various quantitative techniques to detected juvenile delinquency with specially emphasis on ML and statistical approaches. The review is organized into four sections follows as: Section-I gives an overview of juvenile delinquency, prevalence rates in India, and various behavioral risk factors during the developmental period. It also provides general information about ML as a new approach and their application. Section-II included information about the methodology of the present review. Section-III explores the results and discusses which explore the ML and statistical methods for detecting juvenile behaviors and Section-IV concludes the extant research of the present review and the implications for future work.

M ETHODOLOGY

This review paper aim is to find the various quantitative techniques (computer-assisted techniques) ML and statistical approaches which have been used for assessing/predicting delinquent behaviors, traits, and risk factors among juveniles.

Sources of information

For this review article, a total of 15 research articles were identified and selected through Google-scholar, Web of Science, Academia, PubMed, and Research-Gate, using the keywords, namely juvenile-delinquency, ML, Risk-factors, and delinquent-behavior. All relevant studies were selected for review of the quantitative approaches for identifying delinquent behavior and risk factors of adolescents and the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram for articles search process as shown in Figure 2 .[ 34 ]

Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses flow diagram for search outcomes of quantitative assessment of juvenile delinquent behaviors

Inclusion criteria

Research studies published since 2011–2019, case studies, empirical, quantitative, qualitative, and cross-sectional studies published in English were included, which used ML and statistical models to analyze behaviors, risk and associated factors among juveniles.

Exclusion criteria

Protocol, dissertations, prototype studies, and studies which published in other languages were excluded.

Studies on machine learning and statistical methods among juvenile delinquency

In this review, we performed a rigorous search of the literature to provide a narrative description of the various quantitative computer-based approaches which are applicable to assess and identify the delinquent behaviors and risk factors on juveniles. Initially, the search identified 150 articles through various databases, search outcomes show in the PRISMA flow diagram [ Figure 2 ]. One hundred and thirty-five articles were removed by screening through the title, text, removal of duplicate articles and based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, we identified 15 research articles in full text and these selected articles comprising through expert opinions. The findings of these articles tabulated the diverse approaches on the current state of knowledge about assessment of early diagnosis of delinquent behaviors and risk factors and tried to provide a summary which based on computer-based quantitative analysis [ Table 2 ].

Summary table of relevant studies which used quantitative approach to detect delinquent behaviors and risk factors among juvenile behaviors

GLM: Generalized linear model, ML: Machine learning, PEH: Probabilistic estimation hypothesis, CAPM: Categorization of anxiety predictor model, SES: Socioeconomic status, SEM: Structural equation model

D ISCUSSION

In this systematic review, we performed a rigorous search of the literature to provide a narrative picture of various methods used to identify juveniles’ behaviors. We identified 15 articles, with the objective to analyze the application of ML and other quantitative approaches to assess various delinquent behaviors and risk factors of juveniles. The studies revealed ML is a new quantitative method to identify the risk factors and delinquent behavior henceforth; there very few studies are conducted. In this study, we tried to provide a summary of selected articles on the current state of knowledge about quantitative analysis for assessment of delinquent behaviors of juveniles and there only few articles have used ML as quantitative analysis. The City Social Welfare Development Office of Butuan, Philippines, used a dataset to create predictive models for analyzing the minors at risk and children in conflict with poor financial status. And found children with age range 12–17 years are victims of maltreatment, and adolescents between the ages of 15–17 years commit severe crimes.[ 16 ] Kim et al .[ 18 ] used traditional regression, ML method and certified the predictive validity of the models in numerous ways, along with traditional hold-out validation k-fold cross-validation, and bootstrapping to examine the present practice and policy for assessment, treatment, and management of delinquents who have a history of sexual conviction in multiple jurisdictions from New York, Florida, Oregon, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Results revealed that important risk factors among juveniles had some criminal history, sexual offending experiences, and delinquent peers. Some dynamic factors viz. performance in school, peer connection, sorrowful feelings, impulsiveness, mental health, and substance abuse are important anticipating factors among sexual offenders for recidivism.

Rokven et al .[ 19 ] used multinomial logistic regression technique to compare four types of delinquent groups: online delinquents, offline delinquents, nondelinquents, and delinquents who belong to both online and offline categories and found juveniles who having both online and offline criminal records are more likely to commit crimes. Delinquency is indirectly linked with sleep deprivation, with poor self-control acting as a catalyst proved by regression models with latent factors.[ 20 ] Violent video games directly associated with anti-social behavior, even though several correlates, such as psychopathologies has present in youth analyzed by negative binomial regression (extended version of Poisson regression).[ 22 ]

Fernández et al . analyzed through multivariate logistic regression and found, school dropouts’ teenagers had a higher level of irresponsibility, substance, and illicit drug abuse compare then nondropouts.[ 23 ] In addition, lack of parental supervision plays a significant role in the prediction of deviant behaviors on school dropouts. School dropout teenagers have multi-dimensional problem that requires proper parental supervision and proactive school policies to reducing drug and alcohol abuse.[ 23 ] Fifty-two percent of juvenile offenders had issues with academic performance, 34% had family history of psychiatric disorders, 60% of juveniles involved in property crime and 54% of offenders involved in drugs and alcohol use-related offenses had some deficiency in academic achievement evaluated by multiple regression techniques.[ 24 ] Wu (2015) created a multidimensional scaling model and found students used a complex cognitive-mechanism measured and compared their position to friends and others.[ 25 ]

Sexually assaulted history has strongly associated and one of the most powerful variables associated with the intensity of psychoactive substances using by juveniles.[ 26 ] Parks[ 28 ] has used binary logistic regression and multivariate models revealed that no major variations in violent juveniles belong to cohabiting families and other families. However, teenagers of cohabiting families have marginally higher risk to involving in nonviolent forms of crime.[ 28 ] Economic conditions of the family has strongly linked to the influences of parents, siblings, and peers at risk and delinquency. Economic stress, having an active sibling aggression, harmful, and more destructive events affected seriously on adolescent delinquent behaviors who belongs to economically poor families.[ 29 ] Coercive parents are directly associated with violent delinquency of adolescents on both ways as explicitly and indirectly and transformed shame on adolescents. As opposed to articulated guilt, shame conversion is the major cause for more violence.[ 30 ]

It is very difficult to evaluate all possible outcomes and explain a single quantitative approach as ML to early identification of delinquent behaviors and risk-factors of juveniles for intervene in the affected factors. Our study has several limitations. First, other studies rather than the English language were we not included in the study. Second, counties like India have very less evidence-based studies in the field of early detection of juveniles and computer-based assessment approaches as ML for quantitative analysis. Third, only 15 articles were considered which fulfilled the inclusion criteria.

I MPLICATION

The modern world is fully based on computers and technology for making works easy and faster. ML model is an emerging future technology in the field of health and mental health. It has the potential to predictive ability to detect health/mental health-related problems as well as for early diagnosis of problems behaviors. This review is acknowledging the use of quantitative analysis focused on ML algorithm as a new research area for early identification of delinquent behaviors of children, to prevent the deviant behaviors and related risk-factors and may be beneficial for future studies and contribute to make a peaceful society and worthful young generation for the nation.

C ONCLUSION

This review showed that available literature based on ML and other quantitative methods to identify the risk factors and delinquent behaviors of juveniles. Young peoples are at a higher risk to learn maladaptive/deviant behaviors as violent, aggressive, hyperactive, and easily involved in criminal activities. According to studies, individual factors, family environment, family structure, size/type of the family, parental status (single/separate/divorces) are highly affected adolescent’s behaviors. In addition, social, environmental, and economic conditions are lead to adapt conductive and delinquent behaviors. There highly need to identify delinquent behaviors in the initial stage to prevent with affected risk factors. It is very crucial for early screening and intervention.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment

Authors acknowledge to Department of Science and Technology- Cognitive Science Research Initiative (DST-CSRI) for sponsored the project in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, India, which explores the technology-based approach in multidisciplinary works. The authors also would like to thank Mr. Abhinash Jenasamanta and Mr. Devesh Upadhyay, Research Scholars, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BIT, Mesra, Ranchi, for technical and motivational support.

R EFERENCES

• Law of torts – Complete Reading Material
• Weekly Competition – Week 4 – September 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 1 October 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 2 – October 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 3 – October 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 4 – October 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 5 October 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 1 – November 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 2 – November 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 3 – November 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 4 – November 2019
• Weekly Competition – Week 1 – December 2019
• Sign in / Join

• Career and Practice Development
• Criminal Law
• Featured Student Assignments (LawSikho)
• juvenile crime

Juvenile delinquency

This article is written by Amandeep Kaur , a student of Symbiosis Law School, Pune; and Monesh Mehndiratta , of Graphic Era Hill University, Dehradun. The authors of this article have discussed Juvenile delinquency in India and the legislation available. The article explains the meaning of juvenile delinquency, its causes, and the relevant laws in India regarding this. It also explains the juvenile justice system prevailing in the UK and the USA.

It has been published by Rachit Garg.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Have ever heard or seen a child stealing something from a shop or witnessed a minor assaulting or threatening somebody?

I am sure this might be shocking for you. You might also be questioning why a child would commit such unlawful or illegal acts. But let me tell you, it’s true.  

A country’s future relies largely on its future generation. Whether a country would be a developed country in future or its growth would be static depends on its human resource. Thus, it is necessary to invest in the development of the citizens, especially the young generation which consists of children, adolescents and teenagers. If they are nourished well with love and care and moral values are imbibed in them, they will surely become law-abiding citizens. However, if they are neglected or involved in bad company or experience an abusive childhood, they might turn into a delinquent, i.e., one who shows disapproved behaviour or does not abide by the norms, rules and laws in a society, at a young age. 

Children of tender age are delicate and mould themselves according to the circumstances they face. They could either come out and shine bright or become criminals. Thus, it becomes necessary to give importance to their development and growth. Any reason that could contribute to juvenile delinquency must be taken seriously, and efforts must be made to minimise such reasons. The present article deals with the meaning of juvenile delinquency, factors that are responsible for such acts and behaviours, laws prevailing regarding this, and the treatment of juveniles. It also provides initiatives or measures for the prevention of juvenile delinquency.

Meaning and Aim of the Juvenile Justice System

Adolescent Justice System

An adolescent is a youngster who isn’t yet mature enough to be viewed as a grown-up. Juvenile Justice manages the treatment of kids in the struggle with the law and furthermore takes a gander at the main drivers of culpable conduct and measures to avert such conduct.

Aims of Juvenile Justice

• It is based on the rights of the child.
• It applies the principle of restorative justice i.e. to restore the balance of a situation disturbed by crime rather than simply meting out punishment.
• This system puts the best interest of the child first.
• The primary objective of this system is to focus on the prevention of crimes and injustice done to juveniles.

Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile Delinquency is the involvement of a kid who is between the age of 10 and 17 in illegal activity or behaviour. Adolescent misconduct is likewise used to allude to youngsters who display constant conduct of underhandedness or noncompliance, in order to be considered out of parental control, getting to be plainly subject to legitimate activity by the court framework. Juvenile delinquency is also known as “juvenile offending,” and each state has a separate legal system in place to deal with juveniles who break the law.

The term ‘delinquency’ is derived from the Latin word ‘delinquer’ , which means ‘omit’. Juvenile delinquency refers to the disapproved behaviour of children and adolescents, where they tend to show criminal behaviour. In simple terms, it means deviance from the approved norms and laws in society, where children usually indulge in anti-social activities. 

The term has an extensive meaning and also includes the hostile behaviour of a child. However, according to a settled principle of criminal law which is also applicable to international criminal law, “ nullum crimen sine lege, ” which means that an act of a person cannot become a crime and he or she cannot face punishment for that unless it is recognised or defined under the law. Thus, an orphan or abandoned child or a child with uncontrollable and aggressive behaviour cannot be said to commit a crime unless he does an unlawful or illegal act which is considered to be an offence under the existing law of the country in which it is enacted. These offences could include murder, rape, theft, kidnapping, assault, and so on.  

This problem of juvenile delinquency is persistent in every country and thus, the issue of having a uniform definition of the term was identified by the United Nations . This resulted in the Second United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders which was held in 1960.  The term was defined as, “ acts of minors due to which they violate criminal law and indulge in behaviour which is objected to and disapproved by society and law of the country in which they reside.”

Causes of juvenile delinquency

The problem of juvenile delinquency has become a hot issue for the world and persists in every country across the globe. In order to deal with this issue and uproot it from our society, it is imperative to understand the fundamental causes and reasons of juvenile delinquency.  

Advancement of technology and economic growth

With the advancement of technology and the growth and development of society, there has been a change in the thinking process. There is a high influence of westernisation and modernisation on the lifestyle of people. Apart from this, with the establishment of industries, people started migrating from rural areas to urban areas and there arose the issue of slums, overcrowding etc. This further led to economic and financial problems for families. 

To curb such problems, children engaged themselves either in child labour or deviant activities. This gave rise to juvenile delinquency. It has been observed that the temptation to live a luxurious life led youngsters towards wrongful means to fulfil their desires. 

Family issues

Another major reason behind the increase in juvenile delinquency is family issues. Family is the first place to which a child is attached. Children usually learn from what they observe around them. If there is disintegration in the family, such as continuous fights between parents, lack of love and affection, broken families, etc., it will affect a child’s growth and development mentally, physically, and emotionally and would also lead to juvenile delinquency. 

Once a child feels neglected by his or her own parents and relatives, it can cause him or her to commit crimes due to aggression and other negative feelings. Children at a tender age need affection, love, care, protection, and guidance. Families must emphasise preventing children from indulging in criminal behaviour and focus on their growth and development so that they become successful and law-abiding citizens. Adequate opportunities must be given to them by their parents to develop their personalities with proper education that is channelled correctly.

Changing patterns in lifestyle

A change in lifestyle is yet another reason for criminal behaviour in children. The immaterial and changing patterns in the lifestyle of people make it arduous for children and teenagers to adjust and revamp their family relations. They are mostly confronted with the issue of the generation gap due to which they detach themselves and develop apathy. They are also incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong i.e., become amoral. Apparently, they are misguided and end up choosing the immoral or evil path. Another reason for showing delinquent tendencies is the company of children. People with whom they spend most of their time can either shape their personalities into law-abiding citizens or turn them into criminals. 

Another drawback of change in lifestyle is that most of the time, parents and children do not interact with each other. Parents are either too busy with their office work and schedules or struggling with their own complications in life as a result of which children are often neglected. This might induce frustration, anxiety and aggression in children. Thus, it is necessary that parents and children interact with each other and spend some quality time to comprehend the issues faced by children in their day-to-day lives. Parents must also listen to their children and be concerned to help them whenever they require it. 

Biological factors

Biological factors like physiological and mental issues, low intelligence, a lack of understanding, etc. also lead to delinquent behaviour among children. It has been observed that girls usually attain puberty at a very young age and can easily become prey to sexual offences. Curiosity is another preeminent reason for delinquent behaviour among juveniles with respect to sexual offences like rape. Here comes the role of parents, teachers, and elders. They must educate their children regarding the biological differences between a male and female and answer all their questions regarding other biological processes and consequences of any illegal or unlawful act.

When a child is not able to get the basic necessities of life, there is high chance that the child may indulge in delinquent acts to get those necessities. This means that poverty also contributes to juvenile delinquency. Failure to provide children with necessities like food, shelter, clothes, education, etc. can force them to earn money by hook or crook in order to get what they desire. People living in slums find it difficult to survive as they are not able to get even the basic necessities of life. Corruption is another major reason which contributes towards poverty which ultimately leads to increased instances of juvenile delinquency in society. Poor children often get involved in stealing, robbery and other criminal activities to help their families with basic necessities. The government must take initiatives to eradicate the problem of poverty and provide basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter etc to its citizens. Efforts must be made to provide quality education and quality training so that they can lead a good life in the future. 

Other factors

Other factors like child labour, abusive childhood, traumatic experiences, financial issues, illiteracy, unsoundness of mind etc are also responsible for delinquent behaviour in juveniles.

Juvenile justice in other countries 

Juvenile justice in the u.k..

Juvenile delinquency in the United Kingdom was considered a transient phase meaning that it would vanish with age. The penal reformists in the country adopted a different approach to the treatment of juveniles. The Ragged Industrial School Movement is considered to be the first initiative taken towards the prevention of juvenile delinquency. This movement led to the establishment of an industrial school for homeless, destitute, and delinquent children. 

Miss Marry Carpenter, a famous social activist, is known for the significant effort that she made towards the prevention of delinquency in juveniles. She started a Ragged Industrial School in Bristol. Further, in 1838, a Parkhurst prison was established for the treatment of juveniles. The enactment of the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879 in the country, provided that a child under 7 years of age is incapable of committing a crime and hence, must not be convicted. In 1907, the Probation of Offenders Act, 1907 was enacted which empowered the courts to release juveniles in certain offences. Finally, the Juvenile courts were established in 1908 under the Children Act, 1908 . These courts were empowered to deal with matters involving juveniles and take proper care and provide protection to the young offender. 

Further, the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933 , provided remand homes for the treatment of juveniles. Children below the age of 17 were kept in observation homes before the trial.  It is noted that after the enactment of the Criminal Justice Act, 1982 , the U.K. government liberalised the law relating to juveniles in order to abide by the guidelines of the United Nations in this regard. 

Juvenile justice in the U.S.A

The history of juvenile courts in the USA starts with the appointment of state agents in 1869 who were responsible for taking care of juveniles. In 1878, this work was given to probation officers. Currently, each state in the country has one juvenile court and a specialised unit in the judicial service to deal with such matters. These courts are provided financial support by the local governments of each state. Further, Congress enacted the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 to tackle the issue of juvenile delinquency.  

These courts function in the following manner:

• The police first take the custody of a child offender and decide whether to keep the child in custody or not. 
• The next duty of the police officer is to inform the court.
• During the trial, hearing is given to the probation officer as well. 
• It is the duty of a probation officer that when a child is under his supervision, he must find a school or employment for the child. However, if the juvenile violates any condition during probation, he is sent to a certified school or children’s home.  

Who are Juvenile Delinquents?

Juvenile delinquents are regularly youngsters between the ages of 10 and 17 who have carried out a criminal demonstration. There are two principal sorts of guilty parties: rehash wrongdoers and age particular guilty parties.

• Rehash Wrongdoers – rehash guilty parties are otherwise called “life-course constant wrongdoers.” These adolescent delinquents start culpable or hinting at other solitary conduct amid pre-adulthood. Rehash guilty parties keep on engaging in criminal exercises or forceful practices even after they enter adulthood.
• Age-particular guilty parties- Age-Specific Offenders indicate adolescent reprobate conduct starts amid youthfulness. Not at all like the rehash wrongdoers, in any case, the practices of the age-particular guilty party closes before the minor turns into a grown-up.

The practices that an adolescent shows amid youthfulness are frequently a decent marker of the kind of guilty party he will progress toward becoming. While age-specific offenders leave their delinquent behaviour behind when they enter adulthood, they often have more mental health problems, engage in substance abuse, and have greater financial problems than adults who were never delinquent as juveniles.

In the case of Gopinath Ghosh v. State of West Bengal , the accused had given his age as much above the cut-off age prescribed for being a child. However, in this case, the court not only allowed the plea of child status to be raised for the first time but also referred the matter to the sessions judge for a determination of the age of the accused. Approving this approach, the Supreme Court in Rajinder Chandra v State of Chhattisgarh , further laid down that the standard of proof for age determination is the degree of probability and not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Risk Factors and Predictors of Juvenile Delinquency

Numerous kids end up noticeably adolescent delinquents early, frequently between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Numerous adolescent practices amid the pre-high schooler and young years might be viewed as ordinary conduct for kids, as they extend their limits, and battle to build up their self discernment. There are, in any case, certain signs that a child may be going an awful way.

Indicators of adolescent misconduct may show up as ahead of schedule as preschool and frequently include:

• Abnormal or moderate advancement of essential abilities, for example, discourse and dialect.
• Chronic infringement of the principles.
• Serious forceful conduct toward different understudies or instructors.

Studies have discovered that various life conditions constitute chance components for a youngster to end up noticeably an adolescent reprobate. While these are numerous and changed, the most well-known hazard factors for adolescent misconduct include:

• Authoritarian Parenting – characterized by the use of harsh disciplinary methods, and refusal to justify disciplinary actions, other than by saying “because I said so.”
• Peer Association – usually resulting from leaving adolescents unsupervised, encouraging a child to engage in bad behaviours when acting with his peer group.
• Low Socioeconomic Status
• Permissive Parenting – characterized by lack of consequences for bad behaviour, permissive parenting can be broken down into two subcategories: (1) neglectful parenting, which is a lack of monitoring a child’s activities, and (2) indulgent parenting, which is the enablement of bad behaviour.
• Poor School Performance
• Peer Rejection
• ADHD and other mental disorders

History and Evolution of Juvenile Delinquency in India

Apprentices act of 1850.

It was the first legislation which was passed in the colonial period for dealing with children who had done something in conflict with the law. According to this act, the children who have committed some petty offences shall not be sent to prison but to treat them as apprentices i.e. a person who is undergoing a course training in industry or under any establishment.

Stand of Indian Constitution

Article 15(3) , Article 39 clause(e) and (f) , Articles 45 and 47 , force an essential duty of guaranteeing the necessities of kids and of securing their fundamental Human Rights. The General Assembly of the United Nations received the Convention on the Rights of the Child in November 1989 and laid the norms to be trailed by all part States in ensuring the enthusiasm of the kid. It additionally underscored on social reintegration of youngster casualties.

The Indian Penal Code Act, 1860 and Criminal Strategy Code, 1861 treated kids diversely through different methodologies. Act XIX of 1850, 1876 Reformatory Schools Act, the Borstal School Act, the Children’s Act of 1920, and other state-specific legislation like the Bengal Children’s Act, and Madras Children’s Act to address neglected and deviant children these laws gave delinquents some special provisions regarding their Institutionalization and rehabilitation.

The primary formal enactment on adolescent equity in India came in 1850 with the Apprentice Act, 1850 which required that youngsters between the ages of 10-18 indicted in courts to be given professional preparation as a component of their recovery procedure. This demonstration was transplanted by the Reformatory Schools Act, 1897 along these lines gave that youngsters up to the age of 15 might be sent to the reformatory cell, and later the Juvenile Justice Act 1986 gave a uniform component of Juvenile Justice. This demonstration was supplanted by the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2000.

Different Stages of Legislation

Juvenile justice act, 1986.

Truth be told the indigenous speculation on Juvenile Justice has been staying informed concerning the worldwide patterns in this field. With the reception of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the organization of Juvenile Justice, India was the main nation to advance its framework in light of the standards articulated in that. Obviously, alternate targets were to lay down a uniform lawful structure for Juvenile Justice, to give a specific approach towards the counteractive action and control of adolescent wrongdoing, to spell out the apparatus and framework for Juvenile Justice operations, to build up standards and measures for the organization of Juvenile Justice, to create proper linkages and coordination between the formal framework and deliberate offices and to constitute unique offences in connection to adolescents and to recommend discipline thereof.

Keeping in mind the end goal to understand this objective, the Act soaks up the basic components of all the due procedures and participatory models. The new law without a doubt puts a difficult obligation on the state to properly outfit the assets from different segments of financial advancement in guaranteeing the prosperity and welfare of adolescents and an opportunity to recover from the struggle they went through.

Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000

The JJ Act 1986 required that the prior framework worked around the execution of the then-accessible Children’s Acts be rebuilt. Be that as it may, because of the non-attendance of national accord on the time span for such a rebuilding, the means taken by a large portion of the State Governments were still intensely shy of the declared objectives. So as to support and institutionalize the approach towards adolescent equity with regards to the significant arrangements of the Constitution of India and International commitments in such manner, the Government of India re-enacted the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of the Children) Act, 2000. For this, a Working Group was set up and the Act has been implemented since April 1, 2001, to manage the kids inside its domain.

Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015

Adolescent Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 means to supersede the existing Indian adolescent misconduct law i.e. Adolescent Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, with the goal that adolescent criminals under the age gathering of 16– 18 can be attempted as grown-ups for genuine wrongdoings. It was passed on 7 May 2015 by the Lok Sabha consistently and it is currently pending in the Rajya Sabha. Adolescent Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2014 will permit a Juvenile Justice Board, which would incorporate analysts and sociologists, to choose whether an adolescent criminal in the age gathering of 16– 18 should attempt as a grown-up or not. The bill presented ideas from the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption, 1993 which were absent in the past demonstration. The bill likewise tries to influence the selection to the procedure of stranded, deserted and surrendered kids more streamlined.

The United Nations in 1989 adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, for the protection of the rights of children. This convention was ratified by India in 1992. Further, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, 1985 , also known as the Beijing Rules, and the United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, 1990 , also known as the Riyadh Guidelines, provided certain guidelines to be followed in cases of juvenile delinquency. The fundamental principles in this regard include the presumption of innocence, the right to be heard, positive rehabilitation, proper care and avoiding maltreatment of juveniles, etc. 

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 , was enacted keeping in mind Article 15(3) , Article 39(e) and 39(f) , Article 45 and Article 47 of the Indian Constitution .  

Objectives of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015

The objectives of the Act are:

• The Act is enacted with the aim to amend and consolidate the law related to categories of children covered under the Act. 
• It tries to provide basic needs, protection, care, development and treatment of such children.
• The Act adopted a child-friendly approach for adjudication and disposal of matters involving juveniles. 
• To ensure that such children are reintegrated back into society. 
• The Act also provides provisions for aftercare programmes and the establishment of organisations to help young offenders become sober citizens. 

Categories of children recognised under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015

The Act recognises two categories of juveniles:

• Children in conflict with the law.
• Children who need care and protection

Children in conflict with the law

Section 2(13) of the Act defines ‘children in conflict with law’. According to the definition given in the Section, any child who commits an offence or is alleged to have committed it and has not completed 18 years of age, is included in the category of children in conflict with the law. The Act also provides provisions and makes it mandatory that no such child be subject to any kind of harm, abuse, neglect, corporal punishment, or maltreatment. Apart from this, no accusatory words like arrest, remand, accused, etc. can be used during the trial of a juvenile nor can they be referred to with such words.

Children in need of care and protection 

Section 2(14) defines the category of children in need of care and protection. The following children are included under its ambit:

• A child who is rendered homeless and there are no means of sustaining. 
• A child who is involved in child labour or any activity contravening the labour laws or found begging or living on streets.
• Who abused, exploited, injured and neglected him,
• Who threatened to kill him,
• Who has killed, abused, injured or exploited any other child and there is a reasonable apprehension that he or she might do the same with another child. 
• A child with an unsound mind or mental illness and one who is physically challenged and has no body to care for. 
• A child having parents or guardians but they are unfit or unable to care and protect him or her. 
• A child who does not have parents and no one is willing to take care of or one who is abandoned or surrendered by his or her parents.
• A child who ran away from home and whose parents cannot be found even after a reasonable inquiry.
• A child who has been, is being, or is likely to be sexually abused or indulged in illegal or unlawful acts.
• A child who is used or abused for unconscionable gains. 
• A child who was a victim of any armed conflict, civil unrest or natural disaster. 
• A child who is forced into marriage before attaining the age of puberty by the parents, relatives or guardians. 

Juvenile Justice Board

Section 4 of the Act provides for the constitution of a Juvenile Justice Board for hearing matters involving juveniles. The power to constitute the board in each district is given to the state government. It consists of:

• A Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate of First Class with three years of experience who will be referred as the principal magistrate. 
• Two social workers and one of them should be a woman. They must be involved in health, education and welfare activities for children with seven years of experience or have a professional degree of law, sociology, psychiatry or child psychology. 

However, a person will not be eligible for selection by the board on the following grounds, as given under Section 4(4) of the Act:

• If he has violated any human rights or rights of children.
• If the person is convicted of an offence related to or which involves moral turpitude. 
• Removed or dismissed from government services.
• The person was involved in child abuse or child labour. 

Termination of appointment

A member of the board will be terminated on the following grounds, as given under Section 4(7) of the Act:

• The members of the board abused or misused the powers and authority.
• The member did not attend the meeting for three months consecutively without any reasons.
• If the member did not attend 3/4th sittings in a year.
• If the member does any act because of which he becomes ineligible.  

Powers and functions of the board

Section 8 of the Act gives the powers and functions of the board:

• It is the duty of the board to ensure that the child or his guardians participate in the trial. 
• Another duty of the board is to ensure that no rights of children are violated during the entire process. 
• It is the duty of the board to provide legal aid to the child with the help of legal services institutions in the district and state.
• To provide the interpreter or translator to the child if necessary.
• The board can direct the probation officer or the child welfare officer in his absence to investigate the case and submit a report within 15 days. The report must contain the circumstances under which the offence was committed.
• The board has a duty to adjudicate and dispose of the cases related to juveniles. 
• The board has a duty to visit the residential places where juveniles are kept and make recommendations for their improvement to the District Child Protection Unit.
• It can order police to register FIR of the offences committed against children covered under the Act. 

Child welfare committee

Section 27 of the Act provides that a child welfare committee must be constituted in every district by the state government. This committee must be empowered to work for the welfare of children who need care and protection.  Such a committee must consist of:

• A chairperson;
• Four other members, out of whom at least one should be a woman; 
• The tenure of the members in the committee is three years.

The District Magistrate is empowered under the Act to take review from the committee and look upon its functioning. He or she will also act as the grievance redressal authority under the Act. The Act provides that the members of the committee can be terminated on the following grounds:

• Any member abused or misused the powers and authority.
• The member did not attend the meeting for three consecutive months without any reason.

Functions of the committee

Section 30 of the Act provides the functions of the committee:

• Take cognizance of children produced before it.
• To conduct inquiries regarding the health and safety of children. 
• To direct the probation officers, child welfare officers, or district child protection unit to investigate the matter related to such children.
• To conduct an enquiry with respect to people taking care of such children and deciding whether they are fit to do so.
• The committee has a duty to direct the placement of children that are in foster care.
• To ensure the care, protection, rehabilitation and restoration of such children.
• To select institutions for placement of such children keeping in mind their gender, disability and needs.
• To inspect the premises where such children are kept once in a month.
• To certify the execution of surrender deed given by parents and ensure that they are given sufficient time for making the decision.
• Make required efforts for the welfare of children abandoned or lost. 
• The committee can declare an abandoned or surrendered child as an orphan and look for his or her adoption.
• The committee also has the power to take suo moto cognizance of matters related to such children.  
• The committee has to work for the rehabilitation of children who are abused sexually.
• It is empowered to coordinate with the police and other institutions for the welfare of such children. 
• It is the duty of the committee to provide legal services to children who are abused.

Following is the table statistics showing the recent development in comparison mode

Claim of juvenility 

The first and foremost question that the juvenile board is required to determine in any case that comes before it, is the age of the child and whether he or she is a juvenile according to the Act. This claim of juvenility can be raised by the person at any stage during the trial before any court and even after the matter has been disposed of. However, there have been a plethora of cases on this issue of juvenility and how the age of a juvenile should be determined in a case involving him or her.  

In the case of Kulai Ibrahim @ Ibrahim v. State represented by I.G. Police, Coimbatore (2014) , the appellant was convicted under Section 148 and Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 , with life imprisonment. This conviction was challenged in the Supreme Court on the ground that on the date on which the offence was committed, the appellant was a juvenile and must not be convicted. The Hon’ble Supreme Court observed that this plea of juvenility was not raised by the appellant in the trial court but raised only in the High Court. Due to lack of evidence in this regard, the High Court had to reject the plea. However, it was further observed that according to Section 7A of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 , the accused has a right to raise this plea at any stage during the trial. He also has the option of raising it after the disposal of the case. 

In the case of Deoki Nandan v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1996) , the Supreme Court held that the school certificate can be used as evidence to determine the age of the child and is admissible in court. Further, in the case of Ajay Pratap Singh v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2000) , the High Court had to set aside the charges against the accused because no proper inquiry was done to determine his exact age. 

The Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of Satbir Singh and others v. State of Haryana (2005) , reiterated that in order to determine the age of the accused and whether he or she is a juvenile, the date of birth of the child as mentioned in the school register can be taken into consideration. In the case of Panna Lal and Others v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2015) , four people, along with a juvenile, were charged with the offence of murder. However, the case of the juvenile was separated from the other accused and handed over to the juvenile justice board. 

Rehabilitation of delinquent juveniles

The main objective of the juvenile justice system in the country is to restore and rehabilitate young offenders back into society as sober citizens. Thus, the treatment of juveniles becomes important. The Act provides that no child will be subject to any cruelty, abuse, or harsh treatment and establishes institutions like observation homes, shelter homes, etc. for their reformation. The following institutions can be helpful to achieve the purpose:

Observation homes

According to Section 47 of the Act, juveniles in custody during the inquiry or pendency of trial are to be kept in observation homes. These homes provide for the treatment of juveniles and children who are in need of care. 

Special homes

According to Section 48 of the Act, a special home is to be established by the state government in every district for the juveniles and those who have been ordered to live in these homes by the juvenile justice board during their trial. The aim of these homes is the social reintegration of such children and juveniles. However, the authorities have the power to separate the juveniles living in these homes on the basis of their gender, age, nature of the offence committed etc. 

Children’s home

Section 50 of the Act empowers the state government to establish a home for children who are in need of care and protection. This can be done with the help of voluntary groups and non-governmental organisations. These homes provide care and protection to such children and work towards their development, treatment, education, and training. 

Aftercare programmes

These programmes aid and support juveniles and children to lead a normal life after they are released from observation homes or special homes or other homes established under the Act. For example, the government or NGOs can provide financial support to such juveniles to establish their means of livelihood. Apart from this, the Act also provides for the adoption of children in need of care and protection under Section 56 of Chapter VIII of the Act. 

Preventive programmes for juvenile delinquency

Education is essential to shape a person’s life. If quality education is imparted to the children and youngsters, they can become assets for the country and contribute towards its growth and development. The aim of every government must be to provide quality education and guidance to its younger generation. These programmes not only help the children choose their career path but also open opportunities for them to shine and use their energy in a proper manner. 

Recreational activities 

A famous saying that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is actually true. Recreational and fun activities can contribute towards the growth of children and help in preventing delinquent behaviour. With the help of these activities, children can be engaged in fun yet intellectual activities which will also give them a chance to interact with peers, counsellors, teachers, businessmen, motivational speakers, and other eminent personalities. These people can help them understand how to differentiate between right and wrong. 

Parent-children interaction

Children are usually sensitive by nature. It is important that their parents interact with them and create a friendly environment at homes where they are not hesitant or scared to share their problems, thoughts and opinions. They must not be abused or harassed in any manner because if done so, it would have a negative impact on their mental growth.

Community services

Children must be engaged in community services like helping people in need through scouts, youth groups, and NGOs. It would also imbibe in them the values of helping and respecting each other, honesty, and truthfulness, and make them responsible citizens. 

Anti-ragging programmes or anti-bullying programmes 

Ragging or bullying had negative and adverse effects on the minds of children. Initiatives were taken by the government to stop these activities.The Central Board of Secondary Education in India issued guidelines to schools to establish a committee to ensure an anti-ragging culture in schools and that there must be a counsellor in every school. Further, in 2007, the Ministry of Human Resource Development constituted the Raghavan Committee on the issue of increasing bullying and ragging incidents in colleges and universities. In 2009, the University Grants Commission (UGC) issued regulations to prevent and reduce the menace of ragging in universities and higher education institutions. Due to all these initiatives, ragging is completely prohibited and punishable. 

Recent case laws

Narayan chetanram chaudhary v. state of maharashtra (2023), facts of the case.

The appellant in this case filed an application for claiming the plea of juvenility that at the time of commission of offence, he was a juvenile. The appellant was convicted under Sections 302 , 342 , 397 and 449 read with 120B of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. It was argued that at the time of the commission of the offence, he was a juvenile, and thus, he cannot be awarded with death penalty.  

The issue involved in the case

Whether the claim of juvenility in this case, be accepted or not?

Judgement of the Court 

The Hon’ble Supreme Court in this case observed that the convict was already in prison for more than 28 years. He had faced severe limitations and difficulties during the time he was in jail. It would even have been difficult for him to find his school certificate as proof of his age for the plea of juvenility. The court further observed that his age in the school certificate was mentioned as 12 years, which means he was a juvenile at the time of the commission of offence and hence, the court accepted this certificate to determine his age. Thus, the court, in this case, held that since he has already been in jail and served imprisonment, and according to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, no juvenile can be awarded the death penalty and hence, the order of death penalty passed by the lower court was invalidated.  

Reserved on: 12.04.2022 v. Union Territory of J&K (2022)

This case pertains to an order of a lower court which set aside the order granting bail to a juvenile. A revision petition was filed by the petitioners in the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir against the judgement of the lower court i.e., Court of Principal Sessions Judge, Kulgam. The petitioners argued that the court misinterpreted the law and passed the erroneous judgement, ignoring the law related to juveniles. 

Whether the said order setting aside the grant of interim bail to the juvenile, in this case, should be set aside or not.

The petitioner argued that neither Section 8 , Section 15 nor Section 18 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 provides any provision that has to be considered while granting bail to a juvenile. Also, no investigation report is required to be submitted in this regard. It was further contended that the lower court failed to consider the observations of the Juvenile Justice Board and the procedure followed therein. The Jammu and Kashmir High Court in this case held that Section 12 of the Act is clear and unambiguous, and so the lower court’s order to cancel the order granting bail to a juvenile was set aside. 

Anuj Kumar v. State of U.P. (2021)

The petitioner applied for the post of constable and also passed the required written examination and the physical test. However, after the appointment, an inquiry was conducted by the Senior Superintendent of Police regarding the criminal history of the petitioner. It was found that the petitioner had once faced criminal prosecution, as a result of which, his appointment was refused. Aggrieved by this, the petitioner filed a writ petition in the court to set aside the cancellation of his appointment. He contended that he was a juvenile when he faced criminal prosecution and so must not be disqualified from the appointment. 

Issues involved in the case

The issues involved in the case are:

• Whether the petitioner was juvenile when he faced criminal prosecution;
• Is the refusal of his appointment correct?

Judgement of the Court

The Allahabad High Court in this case observed that even though the plea of juvenility was not raised by the petitioner during the criminal prosecution, this does not negate the fact that he was a juvenile when he faced the trial.  According to the Juvenile Justice Act, all the charges against him are to be put down and he must not face any kind of disqualification because of the criminal prosecution. The court held that the appointment of the petitioner in this case cannot be cancelled merely on the ground of criminal prosecution. The Court issued a writ of mandamus against the respondent authority and gave the following directions:

• The respondents were directed to appoint the petitioner to the required post.  
• This appointment must be done in accordance with the law. 
• He must be given the same post for which he qualified.  

Critical Analysis and Recommendations

It isn’t sufficient to order elegant laws, however, the execution ought to be finished and culminate. Under the watchful eye of bringing the law into constraint, the enactment ought to consider the foundation required to actualize the law and money-related consequences associated with executing the law. With no discourse with regard to the likelihood/possibility of the usage, laws are brought into drive immediately. Subsequently, there is disappointment in the execution of the laws.

Suggestions and Recommendations

Children and protection had been accepted as the responsibilities of modern welfare. Through social welfare programs and the JJ Act, States have undertaken the responsibility of ensuring developmental opportunities to children living in conditions of want and showing signs of social maladjustment. But the fragmented implementation and malfunctioning of the various organs under the JJ Act have brushed off the basic fundamental principle of different policies. Hence there is a need to transform this approach towards juvenile justice into a ‘system’ of juvenile justice. The first and foremost requirement is to think clearly about the direction of change.

• Formulation of Minimum Standards-  A child cannot develop into a normal human being by the normal provision of food, shelter and clothing. It is necessary to formulate minimum standards of services for various community and institutional services for children under the JJ Act. The qualifications, salary structure, staff pattern, the architecture of the building, and other factors should be in accordance with the objective of providing alternative family care to the juveniles, ultimately leading to their rehabilitation in society.
• National Commission for Children – A national commission for children’s welfare was suggested by the high-level committee constituted by the Supreme Court in a public interest petition for basic facilities for children engaged in the fireworks industry in Madras and Sivakasi in the early 1990s. The government has reiterated its desire to constitute one on several occasions subsequently, but one has still to be constituted.
• Strategy for Change – Probation and other community-based programs cost less than institutionalization. They should also be preferred for their potential for ensuring better care and rehabilitation for juveniles. The state has paid some attention to children but other more demanding pressure groups and priorities deemed necessary have been able to divert the resources for their causes.
• Special Training Programme -A special training program must be prepared and the officers of the Board including the Principal Magistrate should be given training of child psychology and child welfare.
• Sports and Functional Programmes -For better welfare of juvenile games, sports and other functional programs may be organized in observation homes and institutions and encourage the juvenile to participate in these programs so they connect themselves with society. During festival seasons some cultural programs should be organized in the homes for the inmates with the assistance of voluntary organizations.
• Education and Schooling – Schooling of children in homes up to the age of 14 should be made compulsory. They should be given the best of the facilities and opportunities like any Boarding school (hostel) making a course of moral science and civics compulsory for those who are in homes. For the welfare of the juvenile, he must be allowed to go on leave and released on license during the examination so that he can continue with his studies. Sponsorships should be provided for the education of juveniles in good institutions. Personality enhancement courses should be organized.
• Courses and Seminars -Orientation courses, seminars and awareness programs should be organized by the government on juvenile justice on regular intervals to enable the functionaries to imbibe the message discussed and conveyed to them.
• Providing Assistance -A social worker may be associated with the investigation made by the police officer. In the child cell, at least one lady police officer should be posted.
• Needed Change -Unless a more effective lobby is generated for children, it may not be possible to bring about a change in the policy towards children whether for the purposes of finding resources or for implementing the statutory provisions or for a continuous review of policy and implementation patterns relating to children.

For the development of any country, it is necessary that adequate attention is paid to the growth and development of the human resources i.e., its future generation. Initiatives must be taken by the government to introduce quality education and training for its citizens and must impart the same to them. Various Schemes must be introduced to provide education to those children who are unable to pay school or college fees. Apart from this, other aspects like health, safety and welfare of such children must also be taken care of. Most of the states are welfare states and so the focus must be to reform and rehabilitate young offenders rather than awarding harsh punishments. 

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 helps to achieve this purpose as it provides provisions for the development, treatment, correction, and reintegration of children who have committed any kind of offence or who are in need of care and protection. The Act provides separate machinery and authority to deal with juvenile matters, which makes the whole process easy and speedy. It also aims at providing protection to children who have been abused or harassed in any manner. However, efforts must be made for the strict implementation of the Act. Any person who contravenes the provisions of the Act must be punished. This can help reduce crimes against children. 

The Government of India has introduced numerous schemes in this regard which include the most famous scheme of Atmanirbhar Bharat to help the youth become self-reliant and independent and use their aptitude and intellect for the benefit of oneself and the country at large. Other such initiatives include Ujjawala with the aim to reduce the cases of child trafficking, the National Youth Policy 2021 , the National Education Policy 2020 , and many more. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the orders that a juvenile justice board cannot make.

According to Section 21 of the Act, the board is prohibited from making the following orders against a juvenile:

• Order awarding a juvenile the death penalty;
• Order of punishing the juvenile with life imprisonment;
• Any order that imposes a sentence of a specific period on the juvenile in default of payment of fine; 
• Order awarding punishment to a juvenile on the failure of payment of security. 

Is a juvenile disqualified from exercising his or her rights after conviction like any other adult convict?

No, according to Section 24 of the Act, no juvenile would be disqualified from anything pertaining to his conviction under the Act for any offence committed.  

Can a juvenile be released on bail?

Yes. According to Section 12 of the Act, if a juvenile is apprehended by police, the general rule is that a he or she is entitled to bail with or without surety both in bailable or non-bailable offences. However, if there are reasonable grounds that granting him or her bail would be dangerous then no bail wou;d be granted but the board has to record reasons for the same. 

How is the juvenile justice system different from the criminal justice system?

The juvenile justice system and the criminal justice system possess certain differences:

• In the juvenile justice system, no First Information Report (FIR) or chargesheet is filed against the accused which is a juvenile or minor in this case. However, in the criminal justice system, FIR and charge sheet are important to start a trial against the accused. 
• The accused in criminal cases can be arrested by police but a juvenile accused of committing an offence cannot be arrested in the juvenile justice system. 
• Juveniles are not awarded punishment like death penalty, life imprisonment or sentence for a specific period in the jail but can be kept in special homes or observation homes. 
• Under the juvenile justice system, the Juvenile Justice Board is empowered to hear and dispose of cases related to juveniles unlike the criminal justice system where this power is vested with the courts.  
• Juveniles are entitled to bail but an accused in the criminal justice system may or may not be entitled to bail depending on the nature and gravity of the offence committed.
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5288089/#:~:text=Juvenile%20delinquency%20is%20a%20term,according%20to%20the%20local%20jurisdiction .
• http://ignited.in/a/57753
• https://www.thelawgurukul.com/post/juvenile-delinquency-causes-and-prevention
• https://www.nap.edu/read/9747/chapter/5
• https://www.penalreform.org/blog/juvenile-delinquency-causes-prevention-and-the-ways-of/
• https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/united-nations-guidelines-prevention-juvenile-delinquency-riyadh
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/juvenile-delinquent
• https://blog.ipleaders.in/introduction-overview-juvenile-justice-care-protection-act-2015/
• https://thelegalquotient.com/criminal-laws/juvenile-justice-act/objects-of-juvenile-justice-act/1370/
• https://www.latestlaws.com/articles/all-about-juvenile-justice-act-2015-care-and-protection-of-children-by-kavisha-gupta
• https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-juvenile-justice-care-and-protection-of-children-bill-2014  
• https://youth.gov/youth-topics/juvenile-justice/prevention-and-early-intervention
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21338003/
• https://ijalr.in/volume-3/issue-1/prevention-and-control-of-juvenile-delinquency-in-india-a-need-to-re-look-at-the-loopholes-in-the-laws-dealing-with-juvenile-delinquency-by-shubham-dutta/
• https://www.penalreform.org/blog/juvenile-delinquency-causes-prevention-and-the-ways-of/  

Students of  Lawsikho courses  regularly produce writing assignments and work on practical exercises as a part of their coursework and develop themselves in real-life practical skills.

LawSikho has created a telegram group for exchanging legal knowledge, referrals, and various opportunities. You can click on this link and join:

https://t.me/lawyerscommunity

Follow us on  Instagram  and subscribe to our  YouTube  channel for more amazing legal content.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Vishaka & ors. vs. state of rajasthan & ors. (1997) , lata singh vs. state of uttar pradesh (2006)    , schools of hindu law, leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

How to Crack Indian Judiciary Exams

For Indian Lawyers and Law Students Only

Register now

Thank you for registering with us, you made the right choice.

Congratulations! You have successfully registered for the webinar. See you there.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Juvenile Delinquency in India- Latest Trends and Entailing Amendments in Juvenile Justice Act

2018, PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences

Related Papers

International Journal of Reviews and Research in Social Sciences ISSN (Print) : 2347-5145; ISSN (Online) : 2454-2687

Prof. (Dr.) Lalit Dadwal

ABSTRACT: The increasing trend in the incidence of Juvenile Crimes under penal laws is a matter of grave concern. It is a very serious issue for the nation and solutions to end the problem need to be sought very carefully. Indian legal system and judiciary has responded to these trends and has brought some amendments in the laws pertaining to juvenile justice in India. A new law named as The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 came into force on 15th January 2016 which defines new boundaries with regard to penalizing juveniles and providing children from impoverished backgrounds with the basic needs and facilities that they require to live. The Act has introduced a new era of juvenile justice in India by introducing the provision of transfer of 16-18 years delinquent to an adult criminal court. The juvenile justice boards have been given the responsibilities of age determination, to determine whether the offence is heinous, to conduct a preliminary assessment, and then to take a decision whether to transfer or not to transfer the child to the children’s court. The children’s court then is required to reassess if the child so transferred, should be tried as a child or as an adult. . The primary objective of this paper is to analyze the concept of ‘Age of Criminal Responsibility’ in light of the relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code. Along with this, the paper also seeks to understand the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, Causes of delinquent trajectories and International Jurisprudence on the issue of age. This paper will also focus on the juvenile delinquency, evolution of Juvenile Justice System in India, need for the JJ Act, 2015 and the role of judiciary .Further an attempt would also be made to come out with solutions to improve their situation in the society KEYWORDS: Delinquency, Juvenile Justice System, Juvenile Justice Act; Juvenile Justice Board.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW MANAGEMENT & HUMANITIES

madhavi gautam

The unfortunate Nirbhaya incident occurred in 2012, which shocked the entire nation and called urgent need to amend the present law, where juveniles 16-18 years of age may be tried as an adult if they are charged with a heinous crime. This article starts with the evolution of norms and procedure as regards with juvenile justice. It further delves into the historical background starting from pre-independence era to post-independence era and to the current scenario. Further, it also shows that the increasing trend in the incidence of juvenile crime is a matter of concern. Then, it covers 3 models of juvenile justice system which are used across the world to deal with juveniles in conflict with law. Lastly, the article discusses about the adolescent brain development and further analyses the level of maturity, decision making and self control of juvenile. In the end, the article raises few important questions which the current laws need to address

Contexto Internacional

DR. SHAILESH KUMAR

The conception of juvenile justice has its ontological root in the internationalisation of childhood and construction of children as a distinct social class. The Euro-centric vision of children as rights-possessors that informed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989) transformed the epistemology of juvenile justice. India ratified the CRC in 1992, and defined ‘child’ uniformly, irrespective of sex, unlike in the past, thereby challenging its gendered subjectivity of ‘female child.’ Such an emergence of a new modality of delivering juvenile justice that I see as the epistemic shift did not last long, and one gory incident, alongside mediatised demonisation of male children, and brewing social discontent on women’s safety, changed its landscape. This paper foregrounds an analysis of the role of gender in juvenile justice jurisprudence from the colonial period to the present time. Reflecting on the populist punitiveness at play, it talks about the Indian state’s poverty of understanding of children’s rights. Mapping legislative, juridical and political dimensions of the journey of the juvenile justice framework in India, the paper shows how construction of gendered notions of a particular group of male child offenders has resulted in the punitive turn of the juvenile justice system in India. It further unpacks the potentiality of repercussions of such punitiveness, and offers reasons as to why a retributive response by the state is a step backwards in reforming juvenile delinquents. Overall, it narrates the story of a political-systemic failure to deal with an important social issue, which may act as a lesson to be learnt with respect to the child governance framework, both for the countries in South Asia and the wider global South.

Dr Venudhar Routiya

The provocation for selecting this topic for a detailed analysis is to present issues relating to study of children under Juvenile Justice Act. The concept of juvenile justice was derived from the concept of juvenile delinquency. The young children fail to understand the abnormal situations of life. They are not easily amenable to the legal framework and the processes of criminal law. The Juvenile Justice System, therefore, is designed to fit the needs of young offenders only. One principal role of the Juvenile Justice System has been to provide specialized and preventive treatment services for children. It provides a means for rehabilitation and socialization delinquent children.

Shivam Goel

This research paper deals with a host of issues concerning national and international aspects qua the children in conflict with law. Emphasising on the philosophical, legislative and realist aspects vis-à-vis juvenile justice (care and protection of children and minors), the author has adopted the following central line of argument, that is, the current scenario concerning juvenile delinquency cries for incorporation of deterrent aspects, fine tuned, into the rehabilitative and reformative theories of juvenile reprimanding. At the heart of the matter is the Nirbhaya Tragedy, which has forced the legislative canons of the Indian Sovereign State, to stop and think, as to in which direction the juvenile justice system of the country is heading towards, for the state of affairs and circumstances (the ‘sprint’ rise in juvenile crimes) seem bleak enough to capacitate the short-circuiting of the entire criminal justice system in India, thus holding it to ransom. Author’s Observation: The Juvenile Justice Bill, 2014, has taken an intriguing position; that is, juveniles in the age category of 16-18 years, committing serious or heinous offences are to be tried as adults with no death penalty or life imprisonment pitted against them. Under the 2000 Act, the position is different; a delinquent juvenile aged 16 years or above, accused of a heinous crime is to be placed by the Juvenile Justice Board in an institution called ‘place of safety’ for a period of 3 years. If we go by the logic of the present Act (the 2000 Act), the juvenile accused (aged 17 years) in the Nirbhaya case, although was most brutal, aggressive, animal-like and maniacal in the commission of rape and murder of the 23-years-old; he (the accused), as per the provisions of the 2000 Act, should be kept in the ‘place of safety’ for a period of 3 years and then should be released with a legal presumption that the accused has been reformed. If, however, the juvenile accused was of 18 years of age, then it was open for the State to have tried him as an adult, levying against him the death penalty. This, with greatest respect is illogical and more-so in the nature of a legal absurdity. The approach of the Proposed Bill (the 2014 Bill) is sound, for it states that the Juvenile Justice Board, for an accused in the age category of 16-18 years, will decide on a case-by-case basis, whether the accused should be treated as a child or as an adult. The Board, aided by a team of experts will decide this based on the assessment of mental state of the accused.

Nirbhay Gupta

yadhu vamsy

14054 Shantanu Pandey

The juvenile justice system is one of the most controversial issues in the country. In the present era, children are considered to be more indulged in the commission of petty offences. In India anyone who has not attained 18 years of age is considered to be a child. On the other hand, there is no specific age of majority in USA. It is 18 years in some states whereas, it is 19 years in other states. With time, reformative homes and rehabilitation centres have also been established in order to show the juveniles the correct path of life. The juvenile justice system of India is quite similar to that of the USA. Both the countries follow the same common law principles. However, comparatively, rate of crime in U.S is less than that in India. According to the Indian jail committee report 1838, 7 percent of the prisoners lost their life because of bad conditions of the prisons. On the other hand, the mortality rate is only 1 percent in USA.Existing laws are needed to be followed strictly in order to strengthen the juvenile justice system.

Gideon John

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Ajay Sharma

Elsie Mishra

isara solutions

International Res Jour Managt Socio Human

Professor (Dr) Naresh Vats

Suparna Sinha

Ramij Kamal

International Research Journal Commerce arts science

Indian Journal of Psychological Science

Mahima Sahi

International Affairs and Global Strategy

Md. Bashir Uddin Khan

Sanjit Kumar Naskar

Kaveri Haritas

IOSR Journals

Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS)

Sumahan Bandyopadhyay

subham agrawal

Jyoti Gupta

Md. Abidur Rahman

Euro Asia International Journals

Journal of juvenile and family laws

Nishtha M S Bajpai

Pallavi Rajankar

Divya Agarwal

Conference Proceedings of Second International Conference of SASCV.

Megha Shree , Dr.Debarati Halder,Ph.D

Mahesh Menon , Natasha D Roy

Nawaz Haque

Journal Space and Culture, India Open access Journal

Md Shamshad Ansari

Farhan Rezaul Karim

FLE Learning conference proceeding

Prof.(Dr.) Priya Sepaha

Ankit Sharma

Kamrul Hassan Nazmul

Journal of South Asian Studies

Kudrat-E Khuda

In book: Juvenile Justice Law in India: A Critical Study

Shruti Eusebius

Sulaiman Azeez Olajuwon

Terry Hutchinson

Vincent Cann

Gitanjali Ghosh

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Get new issue alerts Get alerts
• Submit a Manuscript

Secondary Logo

Journal logo.

Colleague's E-mail is Invalid

Your message has been successfully sent to your colleague.

Save my selection

Juvenile’s Delinquent Behavior, Risk Factors, and Quantitative Assessment Approach

A systematic review.

Gupta, Madhu Kumari; Mohapatra, Subrajeet; Mahanta, Prakash Kumar 1

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

1 Department of Clinical Psychology, Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Science, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

Address for correspondence: Dr. Madhu Kumari Gupta, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi, 835215, Jharkhand, India. E-mail: [email protected]

Received July 22, 2021

Accepted December 24, 2021

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background: 

Not only in India but also worldwide, criminal activity has dramatically increasing day by day among youth, and it must be addressed properly to maintain a healthy society. This review is focused on risk factors and quantitative approach to determine delinquent behaviors of juveniles.

Materials and Methods: 

A total of 15 research articles were identified through Google search as per inclusion and exclusion criteria, which were based on machine learning (ML) and statistical models to assess the delinquent behavior and risk factors of juveniles.

Results: 

The result found ML is a new route for detecting delinquent behavioral patterns. However, statistical methods have used commonly as the quantitative approach for assessing delinquent behaviors and risk factors among juveniles.

Conclusions: 

In the current scenario, ML is a new approach of computer-assisted techniques have potentiality to predict values of behavioral, psychological/mental, and associated risk factors for early diagnosis in teenagers in short of times, to prevent unwanted, maladaptive behaviors, and to provide appropriate intervention and build a safe peaceful society.

INTRODUCTION

Juvenile delinquency is a habit of committing criminal offenses by an adolescent or young person who has not attained 18 years of age and can be held liable for his/her criminal acts. Clinically, it is described as persistent manners of antisocial behavior or conduct by a child/adolescent repeatedly denies following social rules and commits violent aggressive acts against the law and socially unacceptable. The word delinquency is derived from the Latin word “delinquere” which described as “de” means “away” and “linquere” as “to leaveor to abandon.” Minors who are involved in any kind of offense such as violence, gambling, sexual offenses, rape, bullying, stealing, burglary, murder, and other kinds of anti-social behaviors are known as juvenile delinquents. Santrock (2002) defined “an adolescent who breaks the law or engages in any criminal behavior which is considered as illegal is called juvenile delinquent.”[ 1 ] In India, Juvenile Justice (J. J.-Care and protection of Children) Act of 2000 stated that “an individual whether a boy/girl, who is under 18 years of age and has committed an offense, referred or convicted by the juvenile court have considered a juvenile delinquent.”

PREVALENCE RATE: JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN INDIA

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (India, 2019), statistical data of crimes in India show that overall, 38,685 juveniles were placed under arrest in 32,235 cases, among 35,214 juveniles were taken into custody under cases of IPC and 3471 juveniles were arrested under cases of special and local laws (SLL) during 2019. About 75.2% of the total convicted juveniles (29,084 out of 38,685) were apprehended under both IPC and SLL belonging to the age group 16–18 years. In 2019, 32,235 juvenile cases involving and recorded, indicating a slight increment of 2.0% over 2018 (31,591 cases). The rate of crime also indicates a slight increase from 7.1 (2018) to 7.2 (2019).[ 2 ] The total registered cases against juvenile delinquents are calculated as crime incidence rate per one Lakh population as shown in Figure 1 .

RISK-FACTORS AFFECTING DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR

Studies identify that multiple risk factors are responsible for delinquent behavior categorized as individual, parental, family, community, society, schools/educational, financial, mental as well as psychological factors of the individual and the family shown in Table 1 . Adolescents involve themselves in various anti-social activities to fulfill their basic needs. Basically, “delinquency” is just a recreational activity for earning money. These risk factors differ from person to person during the early childhood period and very crucial because children, who are involved in any kind of deviant activity at an early stage, have a higher chance to adopt delinquent tendencies chronically.[ 33 ]

Juvenile delinquency is caused by a wide range of factors, such as conflicts in the family, lack of proper family control, residential environmental effects, and movie influence, along with other factors are responsible for delinquent behavior.[ 3 ] Family and environmental factors, namely restrictive behaviors, improper supervision, negligence, criminal activities of parents, improper motivation by peers, fear of peer rejection, poverty, illiteracy, poor educational performance at school, lack of moral education may turn the individual personality into delinquents. Moreover, in the environment, deteriorated neighborhood, direct exposure to violence/fighting (or exposure to violence through media), violence-based movies are considered major risk factors.[ 4 ] In India, a higher level of permissive parenting in low-income families had so many family members and due to economic conditions, the adolescents had pressure to search various income sources to sustain the family, and it has affected parental behavior toward adolescents.[ 5 ] The children who belong to the lower middle-socio-economical class and are rejected by society showed more aggressive behavior.[ 6 ]

Juvenile gang members exhibit significantly higher rates of mental health issues such as conduct disorders, attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorders, antisocial personality disorder, posttraumatic-stress-disorders, and anxiety disorders.[ 7 ] As well as the intellectual level of young offenders is significantly different from nonoffenders. Emotional problems on adolescents are related to delinquent behavior and impulsivity directly associated with antisocial behavior among adolescents.[ 8 ] Poor self-control of adolescents involved them in substance use, affected harmfully, and increased involvements in anti-social activities.[ 9 ] Nonviolent people, who not involved in any gang, are less likely to utilize mental-health services, having lower levels of psychiatric morbidity, namely antisocial personality disorders, psychosis, and anxiety disorders, when compared with the group of violent offenders.[ 10 ]

MACHINE LEARNING: A NEW QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION APPROACH

Machine learning (ML) is belonging to the multidisciplinary field that includes programming, math, and statistics, and as a new and dynamic field that necessitates more study. It is a branch of computer science that emerged through pattern recognition and computational learning theory of artificial intelligence. ML is exploring researches and development of algorithms that can learn and genera tea prediction besides a given set of data through the computer. It is a scope for the study that gives computers the capability to learn without being principally programmed.[ 11 ] Tom M. Mitchell explained ML as “a computer-based program to learn from action of “E” concerning any task of ‘T’s, and some performance evaluates “P,” if its performance on “T,” as assessed by “P,” improves with action of E.”[ 12 ] The goal of ML is to mimic human learning in computers.[ 13 ] Humans learn from their experiences and ML methods learn from data. The user provides a portion of a dataset designated to train by the algorithm. The algorithm creates a model based on the relationships among variables in the dataset, and the remaining dataset is used to validate the ML model. In simple words, ML approach is for risk indicator is meant to magnify the potential of current knowledge.[ 15 ] ML sits at the common frontier of many academic fields, including statistics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering.[ 14 , 17 ] ML models principally categorized into three categories, namely supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement based on their task which they are attempting to accomplish. Supervised learning is relying on a training set where some characteristics of data are known, typically labels or classes, and target to find out the universal rule that maps inputs to outputs. Unsupervised learning has no design to give to the learning algorithm, balance itself to find out the patterns through inputs. In reinforcement, interaction with a dynamic environment happens during which a particular target such as driving a vehicle is performed without a driver principally involved in any activities, namely comparison. In numerous studies, pattern classification approaches based on ML algorithms are used to forecast human beings into various categories by maximizing the distance among data groups. ML generally refers to all actions that train a computer algorithm to determine a complicated pattern of data that is conceivable used for forecast category of membership into a new theme (e.g., individual vs. controls).[ 32 ]

RATIONAL OF THE STUDY

In the last decade, various researchers have been attracted to the use of quantitative computer-based techniques for analyzing various psychological and clinical aspects, which have greatly contributed to the area of modern psychology. In this analysis, most of the works are devoted to the use of various quantitative analysis techniques, namely ML and statistical methods which has utilized by the researchers for evaluating various risk and protective factors of juveniles. Henceforth, studies on the application of the ML model for risk-assessment of delinquent behavior on juveniles are limited as compared to other techniques, namely logistic regression. Hence, this review paper may explore the utilization of ML to get an easy and quick assessment on juveniles and helpful for future studies. It may help to determine the most significant risk factors and establishment of a successful treatment program that prevents juveniles from delinquent activities and stops them from recidivism.

In this review, all these studies carried out which has used various quantitative techniques to detected juvenile delinquency with specially emphasis on ML and statistical approaches. The review is organized into four sections follows as: Section-I gives an overview of juvenile delinquency, prevalence rates in India, and various behavioral risk factors during the developmental period. It also provides general information about ML as a new approach and their application. Section-II included information about the methodology of the present review. Section-III explores the results and discusses which explore the ML and statistical methods for detecting juvenile behaviors and Section-IV concludes the extant research of the present review and the implications for future work.

METHODOLOGY

This review paper aim is to find the various quantitative techniques (computer-assisted techniques) ML and statistical approaches which have been used for assessing/predicting delinquent behaviors, traits, and risk factors among juveniles.

Sources of information

For this review article, a total of 15 research articles were identified and selected through Google-scholar, Web of Science, Academia, PubMed, and Research-Gate, using the keywords, namely juvenile-delinquency, ML, Risk-factors, and delinquent-behavior. All relevant studies were selected for review of the quantitative approaches for identifying delinquent behavior and risk factors of adolescents and the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram for articles search process as shown in Figure 2 .[ 34 ]

Inclusion criteria

Research studies published since 2011–2019, case studies, empirical, quantitative, qualitative, and cross-sectional studies published in English were included, which used ML and statistical models to analyze behaviors, risk and associated factors among juveniles.

Exclusion criteria

Protocol, dissertations, prototype studies, and studies which published in other languages were excluded.

Studies on machine learning and statistical methods among juvenile delinquency

In this review, we performed a rigorous search of the literature to provide a narrative description of the various quantitative computer-based approaches which are applicable to assess and identify the delinquent behaviors and risk factors on juveniles. Initially, the search identified 150 articles through various databases, search outcomes show in the PRISMA flow diagram [ Figure 2 ]. One hundred and thirty-five articles were removed by screening through the title, text, removal of duplicate articles and based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, we identified 15 research articles in full text and these selected articles comprising through expert opinions. The findings of these articles tabulated the diverse approaches on the current state of knowledge about assessment of early diagnosis of delinquent behaviors and risk factors and tried to provide a summary which based on computer-based quantitative analysis [ Table 2 ].

In this systematic review, we performed a rigorous search of the literature to provide a narrative picture of various methods used to identify juveniles’ behaviors. We identified 15 articles, with the objective to analyze the application of ML and other quantitative approaches to assess various delinquent behaviors and risk factors of juveniles. The studies revealed ML is a new quantitative method to identify the risk factors and delinquent behavior henceforth; there very few studies are conducted. In this study, we tried to provide a summary of selected articles on the current state of knowledge about quantitative analysis for assessment of delinquent behaviors of juveniles and there only few articles have used ML as quantitative analysis. The City Social Welfare Development Office of Butuan, Philippines, used a dataset to create predictive models for analyzing the minors at risk and children in conflict with poor financial status. And found children with age range 12–17 years are victims of maltreatment, and adolescents between the ages of 15–17 years commit severe crimes.[ 16 ] Kim et al .[ 18 ] used traditional regression, ML method and certified the predictive validity of the models in numerous ways, along with traditional hold-out validation k-fold cross-validation, and bootstrapping to examine the present practice and policy for assessment, treatment, and management of delinquents who have a history of sexual conviction in multiple jurisdictions from New York, Florida, Oregon, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Results revealed that important risk factors among juveniles had some criminal history, sexual offending experiences, and delinquent peers. Some dynamic factors viz. performance in school, peer connection, sorrowful feelings, impulsiveness, mental health, and substance abuse are important anticipating factors among sexual offenders for recidivism.

Rokven et al .[ 19 ] used multinomial logistic regression technique to compare four types of delinquent groups: online delinquents, offline delinquents, nondelinquents, and delinquents who belong to both online and offline categories and found juveniles who having both online and offline criminal records are more likely to commit crimes. Delinquency is indirectly linked with sleep deprivation, with poor self-control acting as a catalyst proved by regression models with latent factors.[ 20 ] Violent video games directly associated with anti-social behavior, even though several correlates, such as psychopathologies has present in youth analyzed by negative binomial regression (extended version of Poisson regression).[ 22 ]

Fernández et al . analyzed through multivariate logistic regression and found, school dropouts’ teenagers had a higher level of irresponsibility, substance, and illicit drug abuse compare then nondropouts.[ 23 ] In addition, lack of parental supervision plays a significant role in the prediction of deviant behaviors on school dropouts. School dropout teenagers have multi-dimensional problem that requires proper parental supervision and proactive school policies to reducing drug and alcohol abuse.[ 23 ] Fifty-two percent of juvenile offenders had issues with academic performance, 34% had family history of psychiatric disorders, 60% of juveniles involved in property crime and 54% of offenders involved in drugs and alcohol use-related offenses had some deficiency in academic achievement evaluated by multiple regression techniques.[ 24 ] Wu (2015) created a multidimensional scaling model and found students used a complex cognitive-mechanism measured and compared their position to friends and others.[ 25 ]

Sexually assaulted history has strongly associated and one of the most powerful variables associated with the intensity of psychoactive substances using by juveniles.[ 26 ] Parks[ 28 ] has used binary logistic regression and multivariate models revealed that no major variations in violent juveniles belong to cohabiting families and other families. However, teenagers of cohabiting families have marginally higher risk to involving in nonviolent forms of crime.[ 28 ] Economic conditions of the family has strongly linked to the influences of parents, siblings, and peers at risk and delinquency. Economic stress, having an active sibling aggression, harmful, and more destructive events affected seriously on adolescent delinquent behaviors who belongs to economically poor families.[ 29 ] Coercive parents are directly associated with violent delinquency of adolescents on both ways as explicitly and indirectly and transformed shame on adolescents. As opposed to articulated guilt, shame conversion is the major cause for more violence.[ 30 ]

It is very difficult to evaluate all possible outcomes and explain a single quantitative approach as ML to early identification of delinquent behaviors and risk-factors of juveniles for intervene in the affected factors. Our study has several limitations. First, other studies rather than the English language were we not included in the study. Second, counties like India have very less evidence-based studies in the field of early detection of juveniles and computer-based assessment approaches as ML for quantitative analysis. Third, only 15 articles were considered which fulfilled the inclusion criteria.

IMPLICATION

The modern world is fully based on computers and technology for making works easy and faster. ML model is an emerging future technology in the field of health and mental health. It has the potential to predictive ability to detect health/mental health-related problems as well as for early diagnosis of problems behaviors. This review is acknowledging the use of quantitative analysis focused on ML algorithm as a new research area for early identification of delinquent behaviors of children, to prevent the deviant behaviors and related risk-factors and may be beneficial for future studies and contribute to make a peaceful society and worthful young generation for the nation.

This review showed that available literature based on ML and other quantitative methods to identify the risk factors and delinquent behaviors of juveniles. Young peoples are at a higher risk to learn maladaptive/deviant behaviors as violent, aggressive, hyperactive, and easily involved in criminal activities. According to studies, individual factors, family environment, family structure, size/type of the family, parental status (single/separate/divorces) are highly affected adolescent’s behaviors. In addition, social, environmental, and economic conditions are lead to adapt conductive and delinquent behaviors. There highly need to identify delinquent behaviors in the initial stage to prevent with affected risk factors. It is very crucial for early screening and intervention.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment

Authors acknowledge to Department of Science and Technology- Cognitive Science Research Initiative (DST-CSRI) for sponsored the project in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, India, which explores the technology-based approach in multidisciplinary works. The authors also would like to thank Mr. Abhinash Jenasamanta and Mr. Devesh Upadhyay, Research Scholars, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BIT, Mesra, Ranchi, for technical and motivational support.

• Cited Here |
• Google Scholar
• PubMed | CrossRef |
• View Full Text | PubMed | CrossRef |

Delinquent behavior; juvenile-delinquency; machine learning; risk-factors

• + Favorites
• View in Gallery

Readers Of this Article Also Read

Health and lifestyle issues among youth: a record analysis of contributing..., prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in urban adult population in a..., emotional intelligence from gender perspective during mid to late adolescence..., situational analysis of rashtriya kishor swasthya karyakram at one of the..., development and validation of a comic tool: an innovative approach to raise....

Home » Articles » Juvenile Delinquency in India: Challenges and Solutions

Juvenile Delinquency in India: Challenges and Solutions

Reading Time - 13 minutes

by Varsha | Jul 8, 2023 | 0 comments

Introduction

Juvenile Delinquency is a term used to describe criminal behaviour committed by minors, typically below the age of 18 years. Juvenile delinquency has become a growing concern in India, where the majority of the population is under the age of 25 years. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (2019), more than 39,000 juveniles were arrested for various offences. Generally speaking, the term refers to a large variety of disapproved behaviour in children and adolescents which the society do not approve of and for which some kind of admonition, punishment or corrective measure is justified in the public interest. It therefore can be said that a juvenile is an adolescent person between Childhood, Manhood, Womanhood as the case may be who may turn into a potential offender if not checked.

This includes behaviours such as vandalism, theft, drug abuse, gang affiliation, and violent acts. Juvenile delinquency is a complex social and legal issue that arises from various factors such as family dysfunction, poverty, peer pressure, substance abuse, and mental health disorders.

Juvenile delinquency is a serious problem that affects communities, families, and individuals. It can have long-term negative consequences for the individual as well as the society as a whole. It is essential to understand the root causes of juvenile delinquency to prevent it from occurring and intervene early to provide appropriate support and resources to those at risk. The criminal justice system and social service agencies play a significant role in addressing juvenile delinquency and rehabilitating young offenders.

Legal Development of Juvenile Laws in India

The development of juvenile laws in India can be traced back to the enactment of the Children Act, 1960. This law aimed to provide care, protection, and treatment to children below the age of 18 who are in need of such help. In 1986, the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) replaced the Children Act with the objective of providing a comprehensive child protection framework that takes into account the best interests of the child. (Pranjape, 2022)

The JJA 1986 was amended in 2000 and 2006 to strengthen the protection of the child’s rights and to address concerns related specifically to children in conflict with the law. Under these amendments, the age of juveniles was increased from 16 to 18 years, keeping in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The purpose of this change was to ensure that children are not treated as adults in the criminal justice system and to provide a separate and distinct framework for the management of juvenile justice. (Mishra, 2022)

Further amendments were made in 2011, and a new Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 was enacted. The JJ Act, 2015 aims to provide a more comprehensive framework for the care, protection, and rehabilitation of children. It introduces a restorative justice system that emphasizes reform and rehabilitation of children rather than punishment.

The JJ Act, 2015 also has provisions for the establishment of specialized juvenile justice bodies such as the Juvenile Justice Boards and Child Welfare Committees. These bodies are designed to ensure the effective implementation of the Act and to guarantee that the child’s best interests are given due consideration in all decisions that affect them.

Factors of Juvenile Delinquency

There is a growing tendency in youngsters to be arrogant, disobedient, disruptive and violent to the law with a result there has been a considerable rise in the incidence of juvenile delinquency. These kinds of behaviours are influenced by multiple factors present and are governed by a person’s experiences, associations, teachings, culture, influences etc, some of the factors which affect/causes are: (Kaur, 2019)

• Family problems – this can include parental neglect, abuse, divorce, or a lack of parental guidance. Family dynamics such as parental neglect or abuse, lack of supervision, parental conflict or separation, substance abuse, poverty, and criminal behaviour can contribute to delinquent behaviour among juveniles. The British Home Secretary Mr. Butler once said that “the natural consequence of broken homes is lack of parental control, absence of security and want of love and affection towards children, which are contributing factors for juvenile delinquency. An unprecedented increase in divorce cases and matrimonial disputes is one of the major causes for disrupting family solidarity. Discriminatory or step-motherly treatment of children also has an adverse effect on the psychology of the child. A neglected child shows certain behaviours which may lead him to either be numb towards how other people feel and may lead to finding ways to vent out the frustration and anger which might not be good for society as he is not under healthy supervision or he may start to seek validations too much from a person who he thinks is gives him any importance and he starts to follow him blindly which when met with bad association lead to children committing such acts which constitute a crime just for the sake of validation from the person influencing him.
• Peer pressure – teenagers may feel the need to conform to what their peers are doing, even if it means breaking the law. The influence of peer groups can push juveniles to engage in risky and criminal behaviour, seeking acceptance or social status. In many cases, juveniles who engage in criminal activities do so because of peer influence. They may feel like the only way to fit in with their peers is to participate in illegal activities, even if they know it’s wrong. They may also feel pressure to impress their peers or gain their approval, leading them to engage in delinquent behaviour. Furthermore, peer pressure can discourage juveniles from reporting or seeking help for their delinquent behaviour. They may fear that their peers will ostracize them for “snitching,” which can lead to continued delinquent behaviour and lack of intervention. It is important for parents, teachers, and mentors to be aware of the risks and dangers of peer pressure and work towards educating juveniles on how to resist negative influences. Building positive relationships, emphasizing the importance of character, and promoting healthy decision-making can all help prevent juvenile delinquency caused by peer pressure.
• Mental health issues – some juveniles may struggle with mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, or ADHD, which can lead to delinquent behaviours. Many research studies have shown that children with mental health problems are more likely to become involved in criminal activities than those without mental health problems. Moreover, children with mental health issues often face stigmatization, bullying, and rejection by society, which exacerbates their distress and can contribute to delinquent behaviour. Thus, it is crucial to identify and address mental health problems in youth offenders to reduce the risk of recidivism and improve their well-being. Interventions such as cognitive-behavioural therapy, family therapy, and psychotropic medication treatments have demonstrated efficacy in managing behavioural problems and improving mental health outcomes in juvenile offenders. In addition, early diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems in children can significantly reduce the likelihood of delinquent behaviour later in life.
• Poverty – growing up in poverty can lead to a lack of resources, opportunities, and stable living conditions, which can increase the likelihood of delinquency. There is a strong relationship between poverty and juvenile delinquency. Children from low-income families are more likely to get involved in delinquent activities compared to their counterparts from well-off backgrounds. Some of the underlying factors contributing to poverty-related juvenile delinquency include:
• Lack of resources: Low-income families find it difficult to acquire basic necessities such as food, healthcare, and education. Children from such households may resort to theft, drug abuse or prostitution as a means of survival.
• Family instability: Unstable family structures, poor parenting, and domestic violence can contribute to delinquency. Children may become socially isolated and end up associating with their peers who engage in criminal activities.
• Poor education: Children from low-income families often attend underfunded schools, which can lead to poor academic performance. Academic failure can result in frustration and a lack of opportunities, leaving the youth vulnerable to delinquent behaviours.
• Lack of positive role models: Many children from low-income families lack positive role models, which can lead to low self-esteem and exposure to negative influences such as gangs.
• Substance abuse – teens who use drugs and alcohol may be more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour.

There is a well-established link between substance abuse and juvenile delinquency. Studies have shown that a significant number of juveniles who engage in delinquent behaviour have also used drugs or alcohol.

Substance abuse can increase the likelihood of juvenile delinquency in several ways. For one, drug and alcohol use can impair judgment, leading juveniles to engage in risky and illegal activities. Additionally, substance abuse can lead to increased aggression and violence, which can also result in delinquent behaviour.

Furthermore, substance abuse can often co-occur with other risk factors for delinquency, such as poverty, family dysfunction, and mental health issues. These risk factors can create a perfect storm of circumstances that increase the likelihood of juvenile delinquency.

Preventing and addressing substance abuse among juveniles is an important component in reducing delinquent behaviour. This can involve early intervention programs, substance abuse education, and counselling and treatment for juveniles who have already developed substance abuse problems. By addressing substance abuse, we can reduce the risk of delinquency and improve the overall well-being of young people.

• Neighbourhood environment – living in a high-crime area can expose juveniles to criminal activity and increase their risk of involvement in delinquent behaviour. (Trinidad, 2018)

The neighbourhood environment can also play a significant role in juvenile delinquency. Research has shown that youth who live in disadvantaged neighbourhoods with high rates of poverty, unemployment, and crime are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour than youth living in more affluent and stable neighbourhoods.

Several factors within the neighbourhood environment can contribute to juvenile delinquency. For example, high rates of crime and violence can create a sense of fear and instability, leading youth to turn to delinquent behaviour as a means of protection or as a way to gain respect and status within their peer groups. Additionally, neighbourhoods with limited access to positive recreational opportunities or community programs may leave youth with few constructive outlets for their energy and creativity, increasing the likelihood of delinquent behaviour.

Other neighbourhood factors that may contribute to juvenile delinquency include poor quality housing, inadequate educational resources, and limited access to healthcare and social services. These factors can create significant stress and hardship for families and youth, increasing the risk of delinquent behaviour. Addressing neighborhood-level factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency can involve a range of interventions, such as community policing efforts, neighbourhood revitalization initiatives, and increased access to social and educational services. By creating more stable and supportive neighbourhood environments, we can reduce the risk of juvenile delinquency and promote positive outcomes for youth.

Charges of Sexual Offences against a Minor

Offenses against minors, including sexual offenses, are taken very seriously by society. While it is commonly perceived that such crimes are predominantly committed by adult men against women and children, it is important to recognize that this is not always the case. In recent years, there have been instances where minors themselves have been involved in committing these offenses.

Since the late 1980s, there has been growing concern about crimes committed by young people. Serious crimes carried out by children and adolescents have drawn the attention of criminologists, leading to an increased focus on understanding and addressing juvenile delinquency. It is worth noting that the country has indeed seen high rates of reported incidents of rape. Various factors, including patriarchal societal norms, a skewed sex ratio, and systemic issues, can contribute to the prevalence of such crimes. Efforts have been made to address these issues through legal reforms, awareness campaigns, and initiatives aimed at empowering women and creating a safer environment for all individuals.

It is crucial to approach these matters with sensitivity, acknowledging that anyone, regardless of age or gender, can be involved in committing sexual offenses. It is important to promote education, prevention, and appropriate legal measures to ensure the safety and well-being of minors and society as a whole.

A. Victim Compensation: Offences Against Women

Rape is one of the most heinous crimes against mankind. The impact it has on both the individual victim and society as a whole. The Supreme Court of India has recognized rape as not only a crime against the individual woman but also a crime against the entire society, as it violates the victim’s fundamental rights and has far-reaching psychological and social consequences.

To address the inadequacy in laws related to sexual offenses against women and children, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 was enacted, which led to the establishment of the Nirbhaya Fund. The Nirbhaya Fund was created to support initiatives aimed at enhancing the safety and well-being of women and children. Additionally, the Central Victim Compensation Fund Scheme was set up by the Central Government in 2015 to provide compensation to victims of sexual offenses.

However, it is concerning that a significant portion of the Nirbhaya Fund remained unutilized after seven years, and a large number of minor rape victims did not receive any compensation. This highlights the challenges and bureaucratic issues in effectively implementing and disbursing funds.

In response to the need for victim compensation, the Supreme Court directed the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) to establish a committee to develop Model Rules for Victim Compensation for sexual offenses and acid attacks. The committee finalized the Compensation Scheme for Women Victims/Survivors of Sexual Assault/other Crimes in 2018, which sets out the minimum and maximum compensation amounts for different types of offenses.

According to the scheme, victims of gang rape are eligible for a minimum compensation of Rs 5 lakhs and up to a maximum of Rs 10 lakhs.

In cases of rape and unnatural sexual assault, the minimum compensation is set at Rs 4 lakhs, with a maximum of Rs 7 lakhs. For victims of acid attacks resulting in disfigurement of the face, the minimum compensation is Rs 7 lakhs, and the maximum is Rs 8 lakhs.

The Supreme Court has accepted this scheme as applicable nationwide, establishing it as the prevailing law in India regarding victim compensation for sexual offenses.

It is crucial to ensure that such compensation schemes are effectively implemented and that victims of sexual offenses receive the support and justice they deserve. Efforts should also be made to address the bureaucratic challenges to streamline the disbursal of funds and provide timely and adequate compensation to the victims. (Hassant, 2021)

B. Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act) is an important legislation enacted by the Indian Parliament to protect children from sexual offenses. It was passed on May 22, 2012, and came into force on November 14, 2012. The primary objective of the POCSO Act is to safeguard children from various forms of sexual abuse, including sexual assault, sexual harassment, and child pornography. It applies to individuals below the age of 18 years, as they are considered children under the law.

The act emphasizes the need for prompt action and relief to the victims. It establishes special procedures for reporting, recording, and investigating complaints of sexual offenses against children. It aims to ensure that the legal process is child-friendly and minimizes the trauma experienced by the victims during the investigation and trial. Under the POCSO Act, not only committing an offense but also aiding, abetting, or facilitating the sexual abuse of a child is considered a punishable offense. This extends the scope of liability to those who assist or support the perpetrators in carrying out the abuse. To facilitate efficient and swift disposal of cases, the act mandates that the trial should be conducted in special children’s courts. These courts are designated specifically for handling cases under the POCSO Act and are equipped with child-friendly facilities and personnel trained to handle such sensitive matters. Special measures are in place to ensure that child victims are protected during the trial and do not come face-to-face with the accused while testifying. Despite the importance and necessity of the provisions and regulations outlined in the POCSO Act, it is true that awareness and implementation of the law remain areas of concern. Efforts should be made to raise awareness about the act among the general public, ensure effective implementation, and provide necessary support and rehabilitation to the victims of child sexual offenses.

Juvenile Justice Board: Introduction and Functions

The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) is a specialized court in India that deals with cases involving juveniles. The board is established under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, which is the primary legislation governing juvenile justice in India. (Admin, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, n.d.)

The JJB is responsible for hearing cases involving juveniles who are alleged to have committed offenses. The board consists of a magistrate and two social workers or child welfare experts, one of whom must be a woman. The board is responsible for ensuring that the juvenile’s rights are protected during the legal process, and for making decisions regarding the juvenile’s care and rehabilitation. Composition of Bench under Juvenile Justice Act, 2015

• Metropolitan Magistrate or Judicial Magistrate First Class (Principal Magistrate herein) [not being Chief Metropolitan Magistrate or Chief Judicial Magistrate] -Experience Required: 3 years
• Two social workers (one being a woman)
• Experience Required: Active involvement for 7 years in health, education or welfare activities pertaining to children; OR
• A practicing professional with a degree in child psychology, psychiatry, sociology or law.

The JJB has the authority to conduct a preliminary assessment of a juvenile who is accused of a heinous offense, which is an offense punishable by death or imprisonment for seven years or more. The assessment is designed to determine whether the juvenile had the mental and emotional maturity to understand the consequences of their actions. If the JJB determines that the juvenile had the capacity to understand the nature and consequences of the offense, they may order the juvenile to be tried as an adult.

In cases where a juvenile is found guilty of an offense, the JJB is responsible for deciding on an appropriate sentence or rehabilitation plan. The board may order the juvenile to be placed in a special home, where they can receive education, counselling, and vocational training.

A. Treatment of a Juvenile as an Adult in certain circumstances

According to Indian laws, a juvenile can be treated as an adult in certain circumstances. Section 4 of the Act provides for the constitution of Juvenile Justice Board for the inquiry and hearing the case of a juvenile in conflict of the law. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 allows for juveniles between the ages of 16 and 18 to be tried as adults if they have committed a heinous offense, which is defined as an offense punishable by death or imprisonment for seven years or more. (Paicker, 2019)

If a juvenile is accused of a heinous offense, the Juvenile Justice Board, which is responsible for hearing cases involving juveniles, may conduct a preliminary assessment to determine whether the offense was committed in a “child-like manner” or whether the juvenile had the mental and emotional maturity to understand the consequences of their actions. If the Board determines that the juvenile had the capacity to understand the nature and consequences of the offense, they may order the juvenile to be tried as an adult.

Treating juveniles as adults is a controversial issue, with some experts arguing that juveniles have not yet fully developed the cognitive and emotional capacities needed to fully understand the consequences of their actions. As such, the decision to treat a juvenile as an adult should be made carefully and based on a thorough assessment of the individual’s mental and emotional maturity.

B. General Procedure of Juvenile Justice Board

The Juvenile Justice Board in India follows a rehabilitative approach towards juvenile delinquency, with the focus on reforming and rehabilitating the juvenile rather than punishing them. (Admin, Juvenile Justice And Its Procedure In India, 2020)

General procedure of the Juvenile Justice Board of India:

• The police or any person can bring a juvenile in conflict with the law to the notice of the JJB.
• The JJB conducts a preliminary inquiry to determine if the juvenile has committed an offense or not. If the JJB finds that the offense committed is serious in nature, then the case is transferred to the Children’s Court.
• If the JJB decides to take up the case, it conducts a social investigation report which includes information about the juvenile, their family, and other related circumstances.
• Based on the social investigation report, the JJB determines the appropriate course of action for the juvenile. The options include diversion, counselling, probation, or sending the juvenile to a special home for rehabilitation
• If the JJB decides to send the juvenile to a special home, it conducts a detailed inquiry into the case and passes a final order.
• The JJB ensures that the juvenile is given proper care and protection during the course of the trial.
• If the juvenile is found to have committed the offense, the JJB decides the appropriate punishment, which is not supposed to be punitive but rather reformative and rehabilitative.
• The JJB also ensures that the rights of the juvenile are protected throughout the trial.

C. Powers and Functions of Juvenile Justice Board

Conducting preliminary inquiries: The JJB is responsible for conducting a preliminary inquiry to determine if a juvenile has committed an offense or not. If the offense is serious in nature, the case may be transferred to the Children’s Court. (WADHWANI, 2020)

Conducting social investigations: The JJB conducts a social investigation report to gather information about the juvenile, their family, and other related circumstances to determine the appropriate course of action.

Diversion of cases: The JJB has the power to divert cases away from the formal justice system and towards alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as counseling, mediation, and probation.

Sending juveniles to special homes: The JJB can send a juvenile to a special home for rehabilitation and reformative purposes.

Ordering medical and psychiatric evaluations: The JJB can order medical and psychiatric evaluations of the juvenile to assess their mental and physical health.

Providing care and protection: The JJB ensures that the juvenile is provided with proper care and protection during the course of the trial.

Adjudicating cases: If the JJB determines that the juvenile has committed an offense, it decides the appropriate punishment or sentence, which is not supposed to be punitive but rather reformative and rehabilitative.

Protecting the rights of the juvenile: The JJB ensures that the rights of the juvenile are protected throughout the trial. (Dave, 2020)

Borstals system

Borstals are a type of correctional institution for young offenders in some countries, including the United Kingdom, India, and some Commonwealth nations. The term “borstal” originated from the Borstal Prison, which was opened in 1902 in England. (Pranjape, 2022)

Borstals are designed to provide a strict, structured, and disciplined environment for young offenders who have been found guilty of committing crimes. The aim of borstal institutions is to reform and rehabilitate young offenders through education, vocational training, and discipline, with a focus on preventing them from reoffending in the future. (J, 2018)

In borstal institutions, young offenders are provided with basic education, life skills training, and vocational training in fields such as carpentry, metalwork, and agriculture. They are also subjected to strict discipline, with a focus on instilling self-discipline, obedience, and a sense of responsibility. In addition, young offenders in borstals are usually required to participate in physical exercise and sports activities. Borstals were introduced as an alternative to prisons for young offenders, with a focus on rehabilitation and reform rather than punishment. (Tripathi, 2020)

The Borstal System was introduced in India during the British colonial era, with the opening of the first Borstal School in 1911 in the city of Bangalore. The Borstal System was established as an alternative to the traditional punitive approach to dealing with juvenile delinquency and was based on the principles of education, training, and rehabilitation. (Ahuja, 2020)

Under this Act, Borstal Schools have been established in various parts of the country to provide education, vocational training, and counselling to young offenders aged between 16 and 21 years. The Borstal Schools in India offer a range of vocational training programs, including carpentry, tailoring, welding, and agriculture, among others. However, there have been criticisms of the Borstal System in India, with some arguing that the schools are overcrowded and understaffed, and that the training programs offered are inadequate. As a result, there have been calls to reform and improve the Borstal System in India to make it more effective in achieving its objectives.

In conclusion, juvenile delinquency is a serious problem that affects many young people and communities. It refers to the unlawful behaviour of minors, usually below the age of 18, who violate the law or engage in activities that are considered harmful to themselves or others. Juvenile delinquency can have a wide range of causes, including poverty, family dysfunction, peer pressure, lack of education and opportunities, substance abuse, mental health issues, and exposure to violence and trauma.

To address juvenile delinquency, it is important to adopt a comprehensive approach that focuses on prevention, early intervention, and rehabilitation. This includes investing in education and vocational training programs, providing counselling and mental health services, promoting positive family and community relationships, and implementing restorative justice practices.

The juvenile justice system should also be reformed to ensure that it is fair, effective, and rehabilitation-focused. This includes promoting diversion programs, providing alternatives to incarceration, and ensuring that young people are treated with dignity and respect throughout the process.

Overall, it is important for society to recognize that juvenile delinquency is a complex and multifaceted problem that requires a collaborative effort to address. By investing in prevention and rehabilitation, we can help young people overcome the challenges they face and become productive members of society.

This article is written and submitted by Suryansh Sharan during his course of internship at B&B Associates LLP. Suryansh is a B.B.A. LLB 5th year student at ICFAI University Dehradun.

Related Articles

Domestic Violence – What All Does it Cover?

November 7, 2017 | Reading Time - 2 minutes

Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior which involves violence or other abuse by one person against another in a domestic setting, such as in marriage or cohabitation. Violence by a spouse or partner in an intimate relationship against the other spouse or partner. The protection of women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 enacted to […]

Attendance in Criminal Cases

Is attendance of an accused mandatory in a criminal case? A very vital aspect in every criminal case is that; All the proceedings are supposed to be conducted in presence of the accused. This fundamental principle, on one hand, assures accused of a reasonable trial, but on the other, bounds him down to be personally […]

General Defences 1

November 8, 2017 | Reading Time - 5 minutes

General Defences Daily life of an ordinary Indian is full of hassle and rush, in fulfilling these duties many a times torts are committed unknowingly or knowingly. To protect the defendant from full responsibility of the act there are several defences available to them as provided by law, these defences are in context with the […]

Same Criminal Transaction Doctrine Under Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita

July 12, 2024 | Reading Time - 3 minutes

The administration of criminal justice in India involves balancing efficiency and fairness. The same transaction doctrine plays a vital role in determining whether a defendant can be tried for multiple offences in a single trial.

Criminal Breach of Trust – Section 405 IPC

November 7, 2017 | Reading Time - 3 minutes

What Is Criminal Breach Of Trust – Section 405 IPC The offence of Criminal Breach of Trust – section 405 IPC is similar to the offence of embezzlement under the English law. A reading of the section suggests that the gist of the offence of criminal breach of trust is ‘dishonest misappropriation’ or ‘conversion to […]

Capital Punishment

August 1, 2019 | Reading Time - 8 minutes

Generally, Capital Punishment in India means the death penalty awarded by the Court of Competent Jurisdiction in India, in rarest of rare case and where it is specifically provided by the IPC or Special Act. Under The Indian Penal Code, 1860 Capital Punishment is prescribed in India for various offences under the Indian Penal Code. […]

Contempt of Court Act Vis À Vis Freedom of Speech and Expression

September 27, 2023 | Reading Time - 5 minutes

Contempt of court laws are intended to preserve the dignity and authority of our Judiciary. While these rules serve an important purpose in ensuring impartial and fair trials, they have the potential to conflict with freedom of speech and expression. To comprehend the intersection of these two important variables, we must first examine the underlying […]

Rights Of A Woman In A Live-In Relationship In India: : Legal Status And Landmark Judgments

November 23, 2022 | Reading Time - 11 minutes

The Delhi murder case of 26-year-old Shraddha Walkar has sent shock waves across the country. The way her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala killed and disposed of her body parts over months has terrified all of us. This gruesome murder where the accused cut his girlfriend into 35 pieces and stored it in the refrigerator has […]

In The Lethal Elixir: Deciphering Four Critical Elements In Cases Of Murder By Poison

November 15, 2023 | Reading Time - 4 minutes

Introduction: Cases involving murder through poisoning need a thorough unravelling of complexity often similar to deciphering a secret potion in the annals of criminal justice. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hariprasad @Kishan Sahu v. State of Chattisgarh has shed light on the dense web of legal factors that surround such instances. This article goes […]

• Advertising & Media Law
• Arbitration Law
• Banking Law
• Constitutional & Writ Law
• Consumer Law
• Contract Law
• Corporate Trade Law
• Court Marriage Registration
• Crime Against Women
• Criminal Law
• Divorce Law
• Education Law
• Environmental Law
• Human Rights Law
• Immigration Law
• Industrial Projects & Infrastructure Law
• Industrial/ Factory Law
• Information Technology and Cyber Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• International Law
• International Trade Law
• Land/ Property Law
• Law of Torts
• Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) Law
• Service/ Employment Law
• Taxation Law

Recent Landmark Judgements

• Joseph Shine Vs Union of India
• Smt. Sowmithri Vishnu Vs Union of India & Anr
• Sri Sankari Prasad Singh Deo Vs. Union of India and State of Bihar(and Other Cases).
• I.R. Coelho (Dead)by Lrs. Vs The State of Tamil Nadu
• Vineeta Sharma Vs. Rakesh Sharma & Ors.

Recent News

• Delays Don’t Sink Arbitration Cases
• After the deadly Pune Accident Teen Back in Custody
• Marriage Erases Crimes?
• Was it Dowry Death? Victim Faced Cruelty or Harassment Shortly Before her Unnatural Death
• Getting Arrested by the Police Without any Reason now Considered Unlawful

Recent Bare Acts

• Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA)
• Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS)
• The Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts (Amendment) Act, 2018
• The Commercial Courts Act, 2015
• The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017

• My Shodhganga
• Receive email updates
• Edit Profile

Shodhganga : a reservoir of Indian theses @ INFLIBNET

• Shodhganga@INFLIBNET
• Mohan Lal Sukhadia University
• Faculty of Law

Items in Shodhganga are licensed under Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Law Audience Journal (e-ISSN: 2581-6705)

Juvenile Delinquency in India: Problems and Remedies

• Post author: Varun Kumar
• Post published: December 25, 2020
• Post category: Volume 2 & Issue 4
• Post comments: 0 Comments

Click here to download the full paper (PDF)

Authored By: Dr. Mohd Saleem (LL.M. Ph. D (Law)), Asst. Prof, Institute of Law and Research, Faridabad,

Click here for copyright policy., click here for disclaimer..

“Children are considered the future citizens of the country under the National Children Policy,1974. They are the most important asset of tomorrow and their safety and development are a great concern in today’s situation.  To look into the matters which are related to their development and growth are the important subject, which hampers their nurturing. A child is born innocent and if nurtured with tender care and attention, will blossom with faculties; physical, mental, moral, and spiritual; into a person of excellent stature. Growth of a child depends on the upbringing which he gets in the society.  The surrounding and atmosphere from where he belongs are the most valuable in their life. The Media and technology are also affecting child mind, these things are boon and ban as a sin.  

The mostly Problems arises when these juveniles develop delinquent tendencies and get involve in law-and-order problems. The general observation is that criminality or delinquency peaks in adolescence and diminishes with age.  The pattern of crime is common across historical, geographical and cultural context Indulgence in conventional crimes is more widespread in teenage and adults. Most of these offenders dis-engage from crime after a brief career in crime.  

The Great Noble laureate Gabriel Mistral has observed and commented in this regard as, “We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the foundation of life Many of things we need can wait, the child cannot, right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him, we cannot answer ‘tomorrow’.”

I. INTRODUCTION:

His name is ‘today’. The Noble Laureate Nelson Mandela stated that “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”. Juvenile delinquency is also known as “juvenile offending”. The illegal behaviour of a child is juvenile delinquency. Prevention of juvenile crime or delinquency like the prevention of any other phenomenon of an unpleasant and destructive nature is obviously much better than their subsequent control after they occur. The most interesting aspect of the subject of juvenile delinquency is that in every year it has been regarded as the problem peculiar to the contemporary society while the fact is that like adult criminal behaviour it has existed in some form or other in the future. The term ‘juvenile’ has been defined under sec 2(h) of Juvenile Justice Act, 1986 and the term ‘ delinquency’ has been defined under sec 2(e) of the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986. Under section 2(k) define the juvenile is a person who below 16 years. [1]

Prior to the JJ Act of 2015, the age bar for juveniles was 18 years under Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, 2006, 2012). In fact, the age of the juvenile under the Indian legislations has taken variation in temporal and spatial perspectives. It varies from 14 to 18 years under different laws and different Indian state. Indian Government is becoming more and more conscious of constitutional and statutory rights of children. It has been realized that male and female children should be treated alike.

The safeguards given to a child in the Constitution of India are as follows: [2]

• Article 14 the Right to Equality;
• Article 15 (3) of the Constitution guarantees special rights can be made by the Government for the upliftment of a child;
• Article 18 Right against discrimination;
• Article 20 right to life and Personal Liberty;
• Article21A Right to Elementary education [3]
• Article 23 and 24 Right against Exploitation; and
• Article 51(k) is added enshrined to provide opportunities for education to his child, or as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years.

I.I CONCEPT AND CAUSES OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY:

Juvenile means any person who is not able to understand the nature of the act or has not reached at the age to behave maturely. In the terms of law, juvenile means a person who has not attained a particular age prescribed in law to make him liable for any crime committed by him and make him liable for his criminal acts like an adult person. [4] An interdisciplinary study on juvenile delinquency discloses that across the world, many behavioural changes occur in the juveniles/adolescents, which are related to the sudden changes in their body due to hormonal surge, associated with puberty. The changes are most apparent in physical parameters, for example, change in height and weight of the adolescents and are soon followed by other sexual and physical changes of maturity. These physical changes are accompanied by mental changes also. According to the UN Convention on the Rights on Child , “ A child means every human being below the age of 8 years, unless under the law applicable to the child, the majority is attained earlier” [5] According to National Plan of Action for Children, 2005, the definition of a child is “a person up to the age of 18 years” [6] .

I.II JUVENILE DELINQUENCY:

Delinquency is such a behaviour of a juvenile which is socially not permitted in any society. It is unwelcomed action, omission or immoral behaviour of a juvenile. There are certain social obligations which that are anticipated from a child by the society and when a child fails to meet those obligations, he is considered to be delinquent. A juvenile delinquent is a behavioural disorder which is generally defined as “a child trying or pretending to act like a grown-up or an adult”. The behaviour of a child can be seen a childish foolish behaviour but it’s a matter of concern. It is very difficult to make a distinction between a delinquent child and a normal child. There is a very unclear distinction between them. Generally, there is a haze of ambiguity and confusion surrounding delinquency and there is no single general acceptable definition for it. The first-ever legislation juvenile delinquency, passed by the State of Illinois in 1899 which specifies various specific kinds of delinquency in addition to offences covered by the criminal laws. [7] The Illinois law defines “Child/delinquent as a person who is incorrigible or who is growing up in idleness, one wonders about the streets in night time without being on any lawful business, or one who is quietly of indecent or lascivious conduct.” [8] A criminal activity committed by an adult which is in violation of law is considered as a crime and is punishable in law but if the same activity is committed by a child below a particular age, it is not considered as a crime and is referred juvenile delinquency no matter child with full understanding has committed a very serious, grave, grim and a heinous crime. [9]  

The Riyadh Guidelines, for the prevention of Juvenile delinquency, assert that “youthful behaviour or conduct that does not conform to overall social norms and values is often part of the maturation and growth process intent to disappear spontaneously in most individuals with the transition to adulthood; a great majority of young people commit some kind of petty offence at some point during their adolescence without this turning into a criminal career in the long term.” [10]

I.II.I JUVENILE IN CONFLICT WITH LAW [11]

Juvenile in a conflict of law means any person who is, under the age of 18 years, alleged to have committed an offence or being suspected of committing an offence. “Child in Conflict with Law [12] ” means “A child who is alleged are found to have committed an offence and who has not completed 18 years of age on the date of commission of such offence”. These children cannot be treated as an adult.

I.III CAUSES OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY:

Juvenile delinquency is increasing day by day and it has become a global phenomenon. No one is born criminal it’s an environment and circumstances which them criminal. There are various reasons all factors which make the juvenile to be arrogant violent. There are various factors which influence the child to commit the offence like social factors, economical factors etc. It’s our duty to understand what circumstances lead the child to commit the crime. State is considered to be the guardian of the society and it’s his duty to help a child to come out of that situation. With the proper guidance and support a child can be rehabilitated. Some of the factors are as follows: [13]

I.III.I SOCIAL FACTORS :

The social evils are prevalent in the society like gender discrimination, racial discrimination, child labour, sex discrimination etc.  If any of the member of the family have suffered from these evils, there are more chances that they will indulge in criminal activities. Sometimes, the juveniles develop delinquent sub-culture because of cultural deprivation and status frustration that they suffer in their early age.

• They often adopt the delinquent tendencies due to peer pressure of the society.
• Poverty and lack of education are also responsible for juvenile delinquency.
• Broken families (the families in which there are no social bonding between the members) are directly related to higher rates of delinquency.
• The negative role of family has also been highlighted in playing major role in juvenile delinquency

I.III.II PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS:

There are psychological explanations to delinquency also, for example, ego, attitude etc. when a juvenile is maltreated by the society then it causes a direct impact on the immature mind of the juvenile and just for the sake of ego or attitude juvenile changes its mind toward anti-social activities. Sometimes when the self-control and social control through primary groups become weak, the juveniles develop delinquent tendencies Amongst these neighbourhood ties and social organization can be an important determinant in the delinquent behaviour of the juvenile in our society.

I.III.III BIOLOGICAL FACTORS:

The biological explanations suggest that individuals are influenced by their biological/ genetic make-up. They are not exactly the captives of biological designing, but it does render these individuals inclined towards delinquent tendencies. The hormonal changes in the body of the juveniles are responsible for their impelling/moving and rebellious behaviour. Ecological/environmental and economic parameters also play important trigger points in the lives of the juveniles.

I.III.IV ECONOMIC FACTORS:

Due to industrialization and growth, people are shifting to urban areas to have a standard life and good education for their children. But the cost of living is very high. In the race of having luxurious life mostly both the parents are working. They get less time to devote to their children leaving them neglected at home without any control. Lack of parental control, want of love and affection, unsatisfactory desires, basic needs etc. are the factors which cause Juvenile delinquency.

I.III.V FAMILY STRUCTURES:

Family is the first school for children to learn what is good and what is bad. Because of a broken family, single-parent families or parent’s frequent fights there are more chances that juvenile indulges in criminality. Parents who are very harsh and strict towards their children and punish them on small issues, children start disrespecting them and stop sharing their problem with them. Children seek a bad company which they themselves even don’t know is bad. If the parents or the member of a family don’t show moral behaviour or they involve in criminal activities, then children learn such things from them.

I.IV JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN INDIA:

The term “Juvenile Justice” was sought to be clarified for the sixth UN congress on the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders in view of the different interpretation made of it during the meeting. [14] Juvenile justice was derived from a belief that the problem of juvenile delinquency and youth in abnormal situations are not amenable to resolution within the framework of the traditional process of criminal law. The JJS therefore is not designed to respond to the needs of young offenders. The main role of JJS has been divided into two ways; one principal role is to provide the specialized and preventive treatment services to the children and Secondary Principal role is the prevention, rehabilitation and improved socialization. [15] Juvenile Justice System is based on the thesis that a child is immature in nature and he is not able to understand the consequences of this act. Due to immaturity, it is very easy to motivate them criminal activity. Our society follows the Reformation and Rehabilitation approach to form the basis of rehabilitation. So that our future can get secure and a delinquent become a good citizen and get all those opportunities which can be enjoyed by a child. [16]

Some authors have evaluated the origin and development of Juvenile Justice in India). Before the coming of British’s in India, the actions of children were governed under existing Hindu and Muslim laws, where the respective families of the person concerned were held responsible for monitoring the actions of their children. In India, the need for new legislations for children was felt under the British rule. Some specific laws were passed between 1850 and 1919, (like the Apprentice Act, 1850, the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1861 and the Reformatory School Act,1876 and 1897). The first Central Legislation was passed in 1986 (Juvenile Justice Act).  It provides uniformity in the entire country in the context of Juvenile Justice Law. In the case of Sheela Barse, [17] , the Supreme Court said that there a need for uniform law and Parliament should enact Central legislation for juveniles. After this, the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986 was enacted. It was passed to provide care, protection, treatment, development and rehabilitation of neglected and delinquent juveniles and for the settlement of certain matters related to and disposition of delinquent juveniles. [18] Juvenile Justice Act is formed on certain guiding principles which need to be followed. The act is basically drawn from all the national and international standards pertaining to children wherein a strong impetus is given to the fulfillment and protection of child’s right, the emphasis is also made on the integration of the child into the family system to ensure proper care and protection all kinds of exploitative situations. [19]

Some of the basic fundamentals which have to be followed in the administration of rules;

• Principle of Family Responsibility,
• Positive measures to promote the well-being of the child,
• Reduce Vulnerabilities and enhancement of child identity,
• Principle of Non-Waiver of Rights,
• Principle of Last Resort,
• Principle of Dignity and Worth,
• Principle of Equality and Non-Discrimination,
• Principle of Right to be Heard,
• Principle of Safety (No Harm, No Abuse, No Neglect, No Exploitation and No Maltreatment),
• Principle of Best Interest,
• Principle of Right to Privacy and Confidentiality. [20]

If these principles are properly followed up then certainty is high that every child comes into contact with the Juvenile Justice system and is assured to be safe, protected, cared.

I.V CURRENTS TRENDS UNDER CRIMINAL LAW:

All the enactments were trying to bring an increasing number of children within the ambit of Juvenile justice. The Nirbhaya Case on December 16, 2012, resulted in the use of social media to organize a continuous protest against the brutal rape. The media put the limelight on a 17-year-old child involved in gang rape. The media flashes headlines that the child was most brutal of all the accused in this rape. With the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, all women were presumed to be safe except from Juvenile who was containing to pose the biggest threat to society of women in India.

After 2012 Delhi gang rape it was found that one of the accused was minor and just a few months away from being 18. So, I was tried in Juvenile Court. On 31 st July 2013, Subramanian Swamy, [21] BJP politician filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India seeking that the boy be tried as an adult. The Supreme Court asked the Juvenile Court to delay its verdict. When the Supreme Court allowed the Juvenile Court to give its verdict, the boy was sentenced to 3 years in a reform house. The mother of victim criticizes the verdict and said by not punishing the accused the Court is encouraging other teenagers to commit similar offences. Judiciary is an important part of the State.

The primary duty of the Judiciary is the administration of justice. It is expected from the judicial system and the judicial decision-maker that the responsive contribution towards upholding child rights is made by them. In Interpretation of new enactment, the role of the supreme court and various high courts is appreciable. The judiciary plays an utmost role in upliftment of children in the need of protection and care and in early disposition of Juvenile in conflict with law. The trend set by the Supreme Court and high courts are the guiding factors for the lower judiciary. [22] The focus has been on strengthening the juvenile justice system by facilitating rehabilitation and better treatment of young people in conflict with the law and by improving protection of child victims. The Supreme Court made the following statement in one of the cases. “Regrettably our juvenile justice system still thinks in terms of terror, not cure, of wounding, not healing, and a sort of blind man’s bluff is the result. This negative approach converts even the culture of Juvenile homes into Juvenile jails. From the reformatory angle, the detainees are left to drift, there were no constructive programme for the detainees nor correctional orientation and training for the institutional staff… Juvenile detainees need a new focus and a new rationale”. [23]  

The committee headed by Justice J.S. Verma on the amendment of criminal laws rejected the demand for lowering the age of Juvenile to 16. As it found no merit reducing the age of Juvenile for certain offences and relied among others, on the fact recidivism had fallen from 8.2% in 2010 to 6.9% in 2011. [24] NCRB data shows that the percentage of Juvenile crimes, when seen in proportion to total crimes, increased from 1 % in 2003 to 1.2 % in 2013 and in the same period percentage of all Juvenile accused increased from 54 % to 66%.

One of the heinous cases came in limelight Muzaffarpur Shelter Home Case wherein44 girls were rescued on 30 May, 2019 following allegation of sexual abuse. An FIR lodged on May 31 named Thakur’s NGO, following which 10 people, including Brijesh Thakur, were held. It’s a network of police, politicians, administration and criminals exploiting and torturing the girls at home. The youngest to be raped was 7 years of mute child. The matter was handed to CBI for further investigation. [25]

I.VI AN OVERVIEW OF JUVENILE JUSTICE ACT, 2015:

The brutal gang rape and murder of a female physiotherapy intern in Delhi in December, 2012, by six men, one of whom was a seventeen-year-old juvenile, retriggered the debate on the age limit of juveniles. Under the existing law, the maximum punishment that could be given to juvenile is 3 years of detention in a remand home, irrespective of the gravity of the offence. This led to hue and cry demanding a change in the juvenile committing grave offences like rape and murder. The Committee on Amendments to Criminal Laws, headed by J.S. Verma , J. was constituted to examine the deficiencies in the existing criminal law regime governing sexual assault against women. The Committee categorically rejected the demand for lowering the age of juveniles to sixteen. Instead, it opined that there was a need to reform and restructures the existing juvenile justice and welfare system and called for stricter implementation of the 2000 Act. It found no use in reducing the age of juveniles for certain offences and relied, among others, on the fact that recidivism had fallen from 8.2 percent in 2010 to 6.9 percent in 2011. [26]

I.VI.I CRITICISM AND LOOPHOLES IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE (CARE AND PROTECTION) ACT 2015:

• Discretionary power of Juvenile Justice Board- Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015 there is no clear provision in which a case will be transferred to the court and Juvenile is treated as an adult. Because of this ambiguity the board uses its discretionary power in passing orders.
• There are circumstances in which Juvenile Justice Board order to transfer the case to adult Court and in another case does not refer the case to the adult Court. In second case, juvenile justice board decides not to seek assistance from expert for preliminary assessment.
• Is the Juvenile Justice Board due to ambiguity in juvenile justice act using its discretionary power inconsistently? It is discretionary power of the Board under Section 15 to conduct preliminary enquiry to determine whether a Juvenile offender is to be sent for rehabilitation or to be tried as an adult [27]
• In 2015 Act, juvenile by treating them as an adult violates their right of equal opportunity and take their right of fresh start. By sending the juveniles to Juvenile home for the reformation give them a second chance for fresh start which is known as Doctrine of fresh start. Juvenile rehabilitation Centre cure their illness and give them new life so that they can grab all the new opportunities to live a normal life.
• 2015 Act support the principle of fresh start by securing their right of privacy by erasing the record of Juvenile offenders. There are some provisions which deviates the right of privacy in special circumstances. The special circumstances are not specifically mentioned and open a door which could lead to “racial profiling” of offenders on the basis of race, cast, religion, background etc.
• There is an exemption for the juvenile offender under 2015 Act that they will not be disqualified under any law for commission of an offence. But if the child is above the age of 16 years who has committed offence is not exempted and there is no protection for such child and under this clause.
• The basic objective of any Act is the welfare of the society and the main purpose of Juvenile Justice System is the welfare of children. But the 2015 act is against this idea. Treating the children above the age of 15 years as an adult in heinous crimes make them criminal leading to devastation of rehabilitation foundation of Juvenile Justice System. There are various emerging reasons for the Juvenile delinquency which legislature does not consider. These juveniles in conflict with law need treatment and cure for their illness. There is no need to treat them as an adult or subject then to different judicial system. By doing this we are violating Article 14 clause 3 and 15 clauses 3 of the Constitution and all International conventions on Protection of Children which are signed by India.
• According to my views the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015 is a good step taken by government. But there should be a provision for repeating offenders and it shall apply on all children immaterial of their age. So, the misuse of this act can be stopped by the juvenile itself and any other person hiring them to commit the offence.  

I.VI.II FINDING REGARDING AMENDMENT IN JUVENILE JUSTICE ACT:

Treating the juvenile in heinous crime is a good step. Some of the reasons are as follows;

• The basic reason for increasing the number of juveniles in crime is the order of conviction only for 3 years in a correctional home not going to deter others from committing a crime against women.
• By awarding only 3 years of imprisonment even for the heinous crime does not provide justice to the victim and punish the accused.
• Crime is all about maturity not about the age so, this is age bar should be removed.
• Measures which can be taken for the protection and rehabilitation of Juvenile. Some of them are as follows:

The provision for the rehabilitation of the juveniles but these homes and executive authority are not working properly. There is a lack in following up of these provisions. Society participation and sensitizing in matters related to juvenile delinquency is important. The people in the society are sensitized about the matters of neglected child and child living in a difficult situation.  The rehabilitation process can make better and easy life to the children in conflict of law.  

I.VII JUDICIAL TRENDS IN PROTECTING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY:

Role of the Court is very important for the securing the rights of the human including the children, children are the asset of the nation and it is the primary duty of the court to secure the rights and facilities available to the citizen for the welfare and development of the society. The Supreme Court has commanded a remarkable job for the care and protection of the children. Some of the highlights showing stand of judiciary in the Welfare of children. The Supreme Court in an order in the case of Bachpan Bachao Andolan v. Union of India , [28] speaking through J.M.B Lokur and Deepak Gupta observed that special attention should be given in the case of disasters. The Supreme Court directed National Disaster Management Authority to take immediate steps to take care of children’s particularly in case of disasters.

The Supreme Court in the case of Re-Exploitation of Children in orphanages in the State of Tamil Nadu v. Union of India [29] , the legislation on child care and protection shall be benefited to all the categories of children. Court said that the definition of expression “child in need of care and protection” of Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 should be interpreted as exhaustive as possible. Guidelines are also issued by the court to protect the rights of children.

In case of Gaurav Jain v. Union of India [30] , the Supreme Court said that children’s have the right to equality of opportunity, care and dignity, rehabilitation and protection by the society with both hands. In case of Lakshmikant Pandey v. State [31] , observed that a child has a right to be loved. He also has a right of moral and material security.

In case of Kakoo v. State of Andhra Pradesh [32] , a boy of 13 years had committed a rape on a girl child of 2 years. Deducting the sentence Justice Sarkaria observed that a long-term imprisonment is sure to turn Juvenile delinquent into criminal and laid an emphasis that in case of child offenders, penological trend command a more humanitarian approach.

In Case of Raisul v. State of UP [33] , the Supreme Court observed that the death penalty shouldn’t be imposed on a person who is below the age of 18 years. In case of Rahul Mishra v. State of Madhya Pradesh [34] , it was observed that the juvenile delinquent prima facie appears to be guilty but he is specially protected under act, under section 12 of the act for the reason of his age has to be granted. In the case of Subramanian Swamy v. Raju Through Member, Juvenile Justice Board, [35] Delhi Gang rape case which was held on December 2012. In this case one of the accused was juvenile and he has not treated as an adult after doing such a heinous crime. He was tried by the Juvenile Justice Board which send him to a special home for 3 years and later on set free to wander freely in the society. This is the irony of our law. In the case of Mohammad Feroz Bhola v. State [36] , the court observed that bail to a juvenile is not the Mercy but the mandate to such person apparently juvenile. The court further observed that section 12 of the act is mandatory unless there are reasonable grounds to avoid so. The above case studies show a pattern of judicial actions in the arena of juvenile justice in India.

It shows that Indian Judiciary has started becoming an ally of individual citizen. The Indian judiciary is emerging as a collaborator and facilitator for fostering better Juvenile justice in the country. Within the ambit of constitution and the legislation relating to Juvenile justice the Judiciary is making efforts by proactive approaches to ensure the well-being of children in the country. The approach is not to torment delinquent with the fear of punishments but to help them and guide to get out of juvenile follies quickly and to gradually transform into responsible adults in the future.

II. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS:

Juvenile delinquency is a grave offence and it has a deterrent effect on the social order in a country. The increase rate of Juvenile crime is setting a trend world over and more and more involvement of the youth in violent crimes. It is a serious issue for the nation which is needed to be handled carefully. The response has been shown by the analogous system and judiciary to the trend of Juvenile crimes as some amendments in law pertaining to Juvenile justice is made. The juvenile justice act of 2016 is a progressive step by the Government of India to keep the track in changing trend of Juvenile crimes. Finally, the recent judgment on Nirbhay case has shown that the changes brought by the legislation under the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2013, has been approved by the Supreme Court in delivering the justice to the victim of sexual offences cases, that no laxity should be provided to the offender claiming the juvenility. It is the need of hour that the certain stringent action is required to overcome the problem of delinquency. The role of the society, parent and their friend should be estimated to reduce the pressure to the children.

They really need more attention than the other’s’ offender. The latest trends of Juvenile delinquency analyzed in India are in respect of age pattern and nature of offence committed. It appears that we need amendments and reviews our juvenile justice policy in the welfare of the society at large the main objective of the JJS scheme was to benefit the delinquent rather punish them.

[1] The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

[2] The Constitution of India, 1950.

[3]    The 86 th Constitution (Amendment) Act, 2002.

[4] Section 2 (k) Juvenile Justice Act,2006 amended 2016.

[5] available at: https://childlineindia.org.in/pdf/NationalPlanAction-2005.pdf (last visited on 8 November,2019).

[6] Arms Act, 1959 (Act No. 54 of 1959) Sec.9.

 [7] Shruti Chaturvedi and SorabhDahiya, “ Juvenile Delinquency: Estimating fearless symbol, and Fertilization “available at ijldai.thelawbrigade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ShrutiSorab.pdf (last visited on 8 November,2019).

[8]   Saroj Choudhary, “Juvenile Delinquency: Elementary Concepts, Causes and Prevention” 3 IJHSR 53 (2017).

 [9] A vailable at: jlcjnet.com/journals/jlcj/Vol_2_No_2_December_2014/14.pdf (last visited on 10 November,2019).

[10] Available at: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_comp47.htm (last visited on 12 November, 2019).

[11] Geeta Chopra, “Child Rights in India: Challenges and Social Action” 85 (Springer, New Delhi, 2015).

[12] Section 2(13) of Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

[13] A. Siddiquie; Criminology and Penology (, Central La Agency Allahabad) 23 rd ed. 2012.

[14] Ved Kumari; The Juvenile Justice System in India 2 nd Ed. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2012

[15] Working Paper, UN Congress on Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders, carcass, venezuela25th August ,1980

[16] Child Jurisprudence and Juvenile Justice, available at: shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bit stream/

201.pdf (last visited on 14 November, 2019).

[17] Sheela Barsev. Union of India 1986 (3) SCC 596.

[18] http/ available at: http://indianbarassociation.org/wp-content/uploads//2013/ 12/Juvenile.pdf (last visited on 14 January r, 2020) .

[20] Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (Act No 2 of 2016).

[21] Subramanian Swami v. Raju through the Juvenile Justice Board (2013) 10 SCC 465.

[22] VenudharRoutiya, “A Critical Study of Juvenile Justice System in India ”, available at: http://www.serialsjournals.com/serialjournalmanager/pdf/1500032698 . pdf (last visited on 20 November,2019).

[23] Sattoo v. State of UP 1979 2 SCC 620.

[24] available at: http://docs.manupatra.in/newsline/articles/Upload/0A6F7370-9CF9-4A96-8E88-5B8195F5DD83.pdf (last visited on 15 November,2019).

[25] “available at: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/bihar-muzaffarpur-shelter-home-case-bihar-scandal-brajesh-thakur-paratah-kamal-sexual-abuse-under-his-care-5292021/ (last visited on 16 January , 2020).

[26] Supra note 21.

[27] The New Juvenile Justice Act has Opened A Can  of  Worms,   available at: https://www.thequint.com/ news/india/new-juvenile-justice-act-leads-to-fresh-problem (last visited on 16 November, 2019).

[28] Writ Petition (civil number) 75/2012, date of order September, 2017.

[29] (2017) 2 SCC 629.

[30] AIR 1993 SC  2178.

[31] (1984) 2 SCC  244.

[32] AIR  1977 SC  1991.

[33]   AIR 1977 SC 1822.

[34] 2001 Cr. LJ 214 (MP).

[35] (2014) 8 SCC 390.

[36] (2005) 3 JCC 313.

Books to read:

You Might Also Like

From Aliens to Humans: An Unblended Journey

The Dynamics of Freedom of Press Vis-A-Vis Indian Media

Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Are Media Trials Suppressing Rule of Law?

Leave a reply cancel reply.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
• PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
• PUBLICATION POLICY
• Article Processing Charges (APC)
• WITHDRAWAL POLICY
• PUBLICATION TIME TABLE
• ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS
• SUBMIT YOUR PAPER
• PUBLISHER DETAILS
• Volume 5 & Issue 5
• ONLINE INTERVIEW SERIES
• POLICY/LEGISLATION ANALYSIS
• CASE ANALYSIS

WhatsApp us

Essay Service Examples Crime Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile Delinquency In India: Reasons, Justice And Solutions

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

INTRODUCTION

Juvenile delinquency - what it means, causes of juvenile delinquency :, violence in their social circles, peer pressure, socioeconomic factors, substance abuse, lack of moral guidance, juvenile delinquency in other countries, international concern for juvenile justice, juvenile justice in india.

• Young offenders should not be tried, they should rather be corrected;
• They should not be punished but reformed;
• Exclusion of delinquents i.e. children in conflict with law from the ambit of Court and stress on their non-penal treatment through community based social control agencies such a Juvenile Justice Board, Observation Homes, Special Homes etc.

Our writers will provide you with an essay sample written from scratch: any topic, any deadline, any instructions.

Cite this paper

Related essay topics.

Get your paper done in as fast as 3 hours, 24/7.

Related articles

Most popular essays

• Juvenile Delinquency

This paper will describe how custody conflicts have detrimental effects on children and it will...

• Adolescence

There has always been an increase in cases of crimes among children under the age of 18 years....

In the United States there are about 75 million juveniles and 1 out 9 of them are at risk of...

Juvenile delinquency is a problem we are beginning to face every day. “In 2014, almost 975,000...

• Juvenile Justice System

Juvenile courts and adults’ courts are similar in the structural system but different in ideas....

• Juvenile Crime

In life, we are faced with trials and tribulations, and how we respond to these problems shape us...

• Perspective

“Environment is the parent of revolution and crime.” similar to Aristotle's quote. Juvenile crime...

Diokno, there is one dream that we all Filipino share: that our children may have a better life...

Crimes are actions that hurt a person and/or property. They are performed by one or more persons....

Join our 150k of happy users

• Get original paper written according to your instructions
• Save time for what matters most

Fair Use Policy

EduBirdie considers academic integrity to be the essential part of the learning process and does not support any violation of the academic standards. Should you have any questions regarding our Fair Use Policy or become aware of any violations, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

We are here 24/7 to write your paper in as fast as 3 hours.

Provide your email, and we'll send you this sample!

By providing your email, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Say goodbye to copy-pasting!

Get custom-crafted papers for you.

Enter your email, and we'll promptly send you the full essay. No need to copy piece by piece. It's in your inbox!

Juvenile Delinquency in India

Current Affairs Classes Pre cum Mains 2025, Batch Starts: 11th September 2024 Click Here for more information

The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to apprise it on whether observations homes, where minors in conflict with law kept, and Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) are equipped with video-conferencing facility

Who is a Juvenile?

• A juvenile can be defined as a child who has not attained a certain age at which he can be held liable for his criminal acts like an adult person under the law of the country.
• The term ‘juvenile in conflict with the law’ refers any person below the age of 18 who has come in contact with the justice system as a result of committing a crime or being suspected of committing a crime.

Juvenile Delinquency

• Juvenile delinquency refers to the antisocial or criminal activity of the child which violates the law

Statistics:

• As per data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau, the incidents of juvenile crime have constantly increased between 2010-2014
• There has been 7.2% rise in juvenile crimes between 2015-16. Maximum number of cases under crime against children were reported in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh

• Another, alarming fact is that, more than 50% of all crimes committed by juveniles were against women and such crimes rose 92% all-India between 2012 and 2014

Causes of Juvenile Delinquency:

Juvenile delinquency is fostered by a wide range of factors which include:

• Poverty: Poverty is one of the major reasons for juvenile delinquency. Juveniles indulge themselves in delinquent acts in order to meet and satisfy the primary wants of their life.
• Family : It has been widely accepted that families of delinquents are characterized by discords, desertions and other problems.Such families have been pointed out as one of the main causes of delinquency.
• Neighbourhood: The immediate environments of a child also affect the trend he will adopt in connection with his personality. Juvenile delinquents largely belong to areas of poor living conditions.
• Factors related to Mental Health : various mental health factors contribute to juvenile delinquency. For example: Conduct disorder.
• Virtual world: Constant exposure to aggression – verbal and physical – on television news, videos and games also contributes to increasing juvenile delinquency.
• Substance Abuse: there is a strong relationship between substance abuse and juvenile delinquency.Substance abuse is associated with both violent and income-generating crimes by youth.
• Bad Peer Group: Juvenile delinquency is often caused or worsened by peer pressure

International Instruments and Conventions dealing with Juvenile Justice

• UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules)
• UN Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (Riyadh Guidelines)
• UN Rules for the Protection of Juvenile Deprived of their Liberty (Havana Conventions)
• Guidelines for the Action on Children in Criminal Juvenile System (Vienna Guidelines)

Juvenile Justice System in India

Apprentices Act of 1850:

• The Act provides for the binding of children, both boys and girls, between the ages of 10 to 18 as apprentices. It also dealt with children who committed petty offences

Provision in the Criminal Procedure Code:

• Under Section 399 of the Indian Criminal Procedure Code (ICPC) convicted young offender below the age of 15 could be sent to Reformatory Schools established by the State Government.
• Section 562 of the C.P.C. also permitted discharge of certain convicted offenders on probation. It also permitted their release with advice.
• Under Section 82 of the Indian Penal Code childrenunder seven cannot be held responsible for their criminal acts.
• Section 83 of the Code relaxes this age up to 12 under some conditions.

Juvenile Justice Act, 1986:

India was the first country to grow its system in the light of the principle enunciated in the United Nation Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of the Juvenile Justice

The main objectives were:

• To provide a specialized approach towards the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency
• To come up with the machinery and infrastructure for Juvenile Justice operations
• To establish the norms and standards for the administration of Juvenile Justice

Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000

The main features of this Act are:

• The Title of the Act stresses on the need for care and protection to both categories of children
• Uniform age for both boys and girls – any child who has not completed the age of 18 fall within the jurisdiction of the Act
• Separation of child in need of care and protection and child in conflict with law
• Constitution of Child Welfare Committees to deal with children in need of care and protection and Juvenile Justice Boards to handle children in conflict with law
• The category of children in need of care and protection has been expanded to include victims of armed conflict, natural calamity, civil commotion, child who is found vulnerable and likely to be inducted into drug abuse
• More legal protection assured for the child in conflict with law – detention to be resorted to as the last option, disqualification of past records and privacy maintained
• The law outline four options of restoration for children in children’s homes and special homes which include adoption, foster care, sponsorship and after care

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2006

• The JJ Act 2000 was subsequently amended and hereafter referred to as the Principal Act
• This Act forms the legal system and framework for the care, protection, treatment and rehabilitation of children of both categories The Objective of the Act:
• To Lay Down A Legal Structure For The Juvenile Justice System In The Country
• To Provide A Special Approach To The Protection And Treatment Of Juveniles
• To outline the machinery and infrastructure required for the care, protection, treatment, development and rehabilitation of juveniles
• To establish norms and standards for administration of juvenile justice
• To establish linkages and co-ordination between the formal system of juvenile justice and voluntary efforts in the welfare of juveniles
• To constitute special offences in relation to juveniles and provide punishment.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015

It was enacted to replace the existing Juvenile Delinquency law, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 so that juveniles in conflict with law in the age group of 16-18 years, involved in heinous offences can be trialled as adults.

Major Provisions of the Act:

• It empowers the Juvenile Justice Board to decide if a juvenile criminal in the age group of 16–18 should tried as an adult or not.

• The Act had tried to make the adoption process of orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children more streamlined while adopting some of the concepts from The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption.
• The act had  introduced foster care in India under section 44. As per this, the families would sign up and the abandoned, orphaned children or those in conflict with the law would be sent to them.Such families will be monitored and shall receive financial aid from the state.
• The law had also made provision that while adopting child, priority is given to disabled children and physically and financially incapable children.
• The parents who are giving up their child for adoption get 3 months to reconsider their decision {It was earlier 1 month}.
• The law mandated that any person giving alcohol or drugs to child would be punished with 7 years imprison or Rs. 1 Lakh fine or both. A person selling a child would be imprisoned for five years or Rs. 1 lakh fine or both.

The Debate over reducing age of Juvenile Delinquency

Arguments in favour:

• There has been a steep rise in serious crimes involving youth of 16-18 years of age and the age factor had been used as an escape from the criminal prosecution.
• It has been found that the juveniles of 16-18 age groups are involved in serious crimes and they are doing such criminal acts with full knowledge and maturity.
• Thus, while trialling juveniles, juvenility should be decided on the basis of state of mind and not the state of body solely.
• Also, to have a deterrent effect it was necessary to amend the existing law.

Arguments in opposition:

• The critics are of the view that the root of the problem needs to be addressed instead of punishment. It is not only the responsibility of the child that he/she has committed such heinous crimes but also the responsibility of the society and the government which has failed to provide healthy childhood to the child and let them drift towards criminal activities.
• Before punishing, it should also be taken into consideration whether there are no possibilities that the child would be reformed, and whether there are chances that the child comes out as a more toughened criminal after spending years in adult jails.

Issues and Challenges with Juvenile Justice in India

• Term of sentence :There is no logical or scientific reason which shows that total and complete rehabilitation can be achieved by a child in conflict with the law within a maximum period of three years.
• Post completion of term and aftercare: Absolute lack of implementation of the provisions of the JJ Act after a juvenile completes his sentence is a major concern. India’s massive population makes it impossible to track and ensure that a juvenile once released continues with his therapy or even reports regularly to his parole officer.
• Juveniles in Adult jails: National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), a number of probable juveniles are found in adult jails. Further, the police subvert the guidelines of JJ Act and lodge juveniles into adult jails.
• Issues with juvenile homes:
• Lack of trained staff and financial corruption is a major concern in juvenile homes across India
• In major of the homes, there is complete lack of vocational training, counselling and individual care plans
• A 2013 report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), “India’s Hell Holes: Child Sexual Assault in Juvenile Justice Homes” stated that inmates are subjected to sexual assault and exploitation, torture and ill-treatment, apart from being forced to live in inhuman conditions

Way Forward:

• Child guidance clinics should be established in order to give appropriate treatment to the disturbed and mal-adjusted children.
• Families should be educated to realize the importance of giving proper attention to the needs of their young children. Investments in strengthening parenting skills and support can go can serve as preventive measures.
• Proper assistance to under-privileged children should be given to build in them good character and law-abiding attitude.
• Social environment -slum areas, busy market places, gambling centres, etc., should be improved
• The general economic standards of the people must be increased to prevent children from becoming- delinquent due to economic exigencies
• Measures should be taken to improve conditions of juvenile homes, correctional homes through regular inspection, adequate funds and imparting training to staff.
• The aftercare system should be strengthened to ensure that a juvenile once released continues with his therapy and is effectively rehabilitated in the society.

Type your email…

Search Articles

Prelims 2024 current affairs.

• Art and Culture
• Indian Economy
• Science and Technology
• Environment  & Ecology
• International Relations
• Polity &  Nation
• Important Bills and Acts
• International Organizations
• Index, Reports and Summits
• Government Schemes and Programs
• Miscellaneous
• Species in news

The Last Webinar on Mains 2024 | Session by Mr. Ayush Sinha