India decides to redefine childhood and let’s down its children

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Yesterday the Rajya Sabha passed the amendments to the Juvenile Justice Bill by a voice vote. This implies that accused or convicted children in the age group of 16-18 years will be kept in adult jail of a crime punishable by more than seven years under IPC. This amendment will abandon the humane and rational bill which has been in place since 2000.

The upper house played to the emotions emanating from the painful Nirbhaya incident of 2012 and ended in a hasty debate that would influence the children of the country. Most importantly the two governments have not considered the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee and Justice Verma Committee, which rejected the amendments in the current form. The Standing Committee examining the Bill had observed that the Bill was based on misleading data regarding juvenile crimes and violated certain provisions of the Constitution. It’s clear that the Parliament passed this bill in haste under public pressure and without due diligence.

There are many arguments against lowering the age one is that only 33,526 of 28, 51,563 cognisable crimes were committed by persons below 18 years in 2014, which translates to only 1.2% of the total. This is hardly an alarming figure which requires amendment of the law.

Lastly Transferring children in conflict with law into the adult justice system will also deprive them of the right to equality and rights under the JJ system.

A 16-year-old cannot be treated as an adult because they have an underdeveloped sense of responsibility and an immaturity and impetuosity of youth. Keeping children in the adult criminal justice system will certainly be indoctrinated in prison, by hardened criminals, and are going to be sucked into the world of crime. This would be counterproductive and limit the extent to which these children can be reformed and have a real chance at a dignified life after their sentence. Reforming a child to have a productive youth is better than wasting a child in prison. There is no scientific evidence that there is any proven social benefit in sending 16-18-year-old children to adult prisons.

The general public’s view that 16-18 year old children in conflict need to undergo the rigorous imprisonment to establish deterrence; is not only naïve and obtuse but also an ineffective approach. The US, China and America still have high incidences of crime despite harsh laws for juveniles.

It is important to note that the original Juvenile Justice Act of 2000 only failed because of a lack of funding which resulted in poor implementation, monitoring and operationalisation.

Furthermore, less than 1% of the total union budget is allocated for child protection, which is wholly inadequate to serve juveniles which form 40% of the total population. An underfunded law will never be successfully implemented or operationalised.

The Juvenile Justice system has been plagued by inefficiency and underfunding. How can this law protect children, if there aren’t enough Juvenile Justice Boards, Child Welfare Committees and observation homes? Justice cannot be confused with revenge especially after the Nirbhaya rape case. Making ad-hoc amendments using a trial and error method will only make the situation worse. Government should invest more into schools for children and not prisons” says Bidisha Pillai, Director Advocacy, Campaigns and Communications.

Moreover issues of women’s safety and sexual crimes against women will not necessarily decrease as a result of this law, because a majority of those crimes are committed by adults. This issue cannot be a justification to change the law; instead this should push the government to strengthen the existing laws.

This could have larger repercussions for India in the international community. Reducing the age of juvenility violates guarantees made under the Constitution, United Nation Convention of Rights of the Child and ‘Beijing Rules’.

In the truest spirit of democracy the parliament listened to the voice of the people and began a debate about Juvenile Justice. However, the legislature has let public sentiment and panic influence an important piece of legislation.

Save the Children works across 17 states of India; and, apart from its humanitarian work, it focusses on issues related to education, health and protection of children, especially for the most deprived and marginalized children.


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