November 13, 2020

Rethinking Juvenile Justice

Crime, the word which is itself a serious problem for any society or culture and it becomes worse when it’s victims are children, child is always considered as a national asset. Today media covers the news of children indulging in serious crimes such as pick-pocket, stabbing, harassment of school teachers, snatching and having untypical behaviour. Though any parent will provide his child a healthy socio cultural environment which will fit him mentally and physically but it is not enough because as society is growing the feeling of jealousy is growing parallel and it is the duty of any economy to provide the equal opportunities to each and every person.

Due to poverty and unemployment some of the children become the non settled social and legal assertions. Juvenile crime has to be always looked by analysing the economic, social and cultural factor. For about 80 years Indian law for juvenile followed the rhetoric and reform over the treatment but the Delhi gang rape case reversed the trend and the JUVENILE Justice Act,2015 passed by the parliament which received the assent of President of India on December 13,2015 and came into force the very next year on the date December 16,2016 by introducing the provision of children of 16-18 years age alleged to have been committed a heinous offence to be treated as adult by court by taking factors such as whether offence is heinous and conducting the preliminary assessment into consideration. It is the major step in the forward and progressive society. Restorative justice is being successfully practiced in many countries for the murder and rape case and Indian parliament was under the emotional presuure, so India took a regressive step of not changing the law but moulding it unlike US and UK which send the child younger than 16 for the imprisonment for long term but it ends up with increasing data of offences in the following years and India cannot change the whole law because of one bad case.

People in India has both the opposed and favour of the amendment, the one who favours has a view that the maturity level on each child is different and in present day technology the influence of Internet and Social media precedes the age of maturity and one who are opposed having the view that even after punishing the child ranging between 16-18 years, it is not sure that by following the reformatory theory, the child would reform or spending 10 years in jail will make him more hardened by heart which led him a serious criminal and it is the society’s failure that it could not provide that child adequate childhood and it is considered as a state machinery failure and law is same for all for all the time.

However, both the views are strong in itself. This paper is focusing light on the amendment in 2015 and deals what are the implication and achievements of this law and whatever the law is, it should be in justice which prevails and even after the short percentage of juvenile crime, one must not wait for the increasing percent and it will be easy to cut the cause from the root as “law and justice are not always the same.”

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