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A bill for juvenile injustice

Updated: Apr 27, 2015 03:22 AM , By Kanimozhi Karunanidhi

Illustration: Satwik Gade

The Cabinets nod to amendments in the Juvenile Justice Bill would not only violate the basic
principles of the Constitution, but also be in conflict with evidence-based social policy.
Nearly 25 years ago, India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
and joined the world in making a promise to protect and promote the rights of children.
Today, with the governments proposed amendments to the Juvenile Justice Bill, India is in
serious danger of going back on that promise.
In August 2014, this government introduced the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection Bill)

in Lok Sabha which proposes to introduce a judicial waiver system in India whereby
juvenile offenders aged between 16 and 18 years would be tried and punished as adults for
a certain class of crimes. Subsequently, this Bill was referred to the Parliamentary Standing
Committee which examined this in detail and submitted strong objections in February this
year. In spite of this, media reports indicate that the Union Cabinet has decided to go ahead
with this Bill. In my opinion, doing this would result, first and foremost, in violating the basic
principles of the international juvenile criminal system and our own Constitution. More
importantly, this would be a regressive move which would run foul of evidence-based social
policy.
Read: Juveniles need reform, not prison
Busting misconceptions
There is a perception that many juveniles are committing violent crimes, especially rapes,
and this can be addressed by the governments amendments. Lets look at the factual
evidence we have. According to government crime statistics, in 2013, 1,388 cases of rape
were registered against juveniles in the 16 to 18 year age group. This amounts to less than
5 per cent of all rape cases registered that year. Further, when the Parliamentary Standing
Committee examined the matter, it found that many of the juvenile rape cases could be
attributed to the increase in the age of consent of sexual activity from 16 to 18 years. This,
prima facie, should put to rest the growing misconception that there is a high proportion of
juveniles accused of committing rapes. Some people have spoken in support of the
proposed Bill on the ground that the seriousness of the crime reflects the mental maturity
of the juvenile. Unfortunately, this argument seems to have ignored all the research in
neuroscience and psychology. It is now well accepted that adolescence is a period of
tremendous physiological, hormonal, emotional and structural changes in the human brain,
making it a time of great vulnerability. Neuroscientists have found that the prefrontal lobe in
the human brain, which is responsible for important functions such as planning, reasoning,
judgment, and impulse control, is fully developed only by the age of 25 years.
A closer look at the governments crime statistics reveals that almost 80 per cent of
juveniles accused of crimes belong to families having an annual income of less than Rs.
50,000 and more than 50 per cent of them did not complete primary school. Evidence from
many juvenile homes across the country reflects the same grim picture. So when we, as a
society, have collectively failed to provide our children with the right environment to grow in,
how fair is it for us to penalise them using an adult criminal system?
A heart-warming example of the efficacy of the present juvenile justice system is the story
of G (identity protected), a girl who came in to conflict with law at the age of 16. She lost
her mother at a very young age and was sexually and physically abused as a child. She was
arrested for prostitution and trafficking. During her time at a juvenile home, she would often
feel incredibly angry and suicidal. But, professional help and care at the Government
Juvenile Centre was integral to her turning over a new leaf. Now, almost 20 years old, G is
working as a salesgirl in a cloth shop and knows tailoring, embroidery and has even started
taking care of children where she stays. This story is part of the excellent work done on this
subject by the National Law Schools Centre for the Child and Law.
Read: Towards a comprehensive Juvenile Justice law
Even countries such as the U.S. and U.K., which introduced the judicial waiver system, have
now accepted that they have been ineffective in addressing juvenile crime rate, public
safety and recidivism. According to the National Campaign to Reform State Juvenile
Justice Systems (U.S.), 80 per cent of the juveniles who are released from adult prisons go

on to commit more serious offences. It is for us to now decide whether we want juveniles to
reform and rejoin our society or become hardened criminals themselves.
Protecting child rights
According to media reports, the Union Cabinet has decided to override the Parliamentary
Standing Committees recommendations. We can expect the Bill to be discussed in the Lok
Sabha in the next few days. In this context, it is essential for us to ensure that correct facts
are placed on record. In the past one month, I had sought information, evidence and
opinions from various women rights groups, lawyers, Pro-child Network a collective of
more than 50 NGOs who are working on child rights and juvenile centre administrators on
this issue. The unanimous opinion of all of them was that the changes proposed in this Bill
are detrimental to the rights of Indian children. Even the Supreme Court, in the cases of
Swamy vs Raju (2014) and Salil Bali vs Union of India (2013), has upheld the constitutionality
of the existing juvenile justice system.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee, which was chaired by a member from the
Bharatiya Janata Party, studied the Bill in detail and stated that subjecting children in the
age group of 16 to 18 years to an adult criminal system would be unconstitutional. Keeping
in mind the prevailing scientific, judicial and parliamentary wisdom, I call upon political
parties across the ruling and opposition benches to stop this Bill in its tracks.
(Kanimozhi Karunanidhi is a Member of Parliament, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.)

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