Reformation is the priority, punishment is not the means: Juvenile Justice

Leishangthem Roshan Meetei *

The recent approval of the union government on the amendment of Juvenile Justice Act 2000 is a result of over sensitizing the matter by general public after the incident of 16th December, 2012.

According to Juvenile Justice Act 2000, a person below the age of 18 is considered as juvenile and if they commit any criminal offence then they will be tried only in Juvenile Court, and the maximum pronouncement for them is up to 3 years in remand/correction home.

The recent approved change states that a juvenile of age 16-18 who commit heinous crime like murder, rape etc. will be tried in civil court and shall be awarded the punishment which is prescribed by Indian Penal Court for their respective criminal offence. In short while pronouncing the judgment they will be treated as an adult.

It is a general believe that if the juveniles are awarded the same degree of punishment like that of the adult, then the crime committed by them will be reduced. But the question is does the statistics of criminal offence committed by the adult comes down even after making various criminal laws?

Scientifically, Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice at MacArthur Foundation, U.S., shows that human brain undergoes key physical changes from the ages of 16 to 18, and continues right until the mid-20s. This evolutionary process of brain primarily concerns risk-assessment behavior that is directly tied to what we term as "maturity".

So even if they know what is right and what they are going to do is not right, they are easily carried away by their emotions. And also they can't think of the consequences and they usually underestimate it. We can't blame them for they have underestimated or they are being carried away by their emotions without a second thought, this is not their fault rather it is due their hormonal and psychological change.

On the other hand according to the psychological experts adolescents are less culpable than adults because adolescent criminal conduct is driven by transitory influences that are constitutive of this developmental stage. By nature of their psycho-biological profile, adolescents are greatly influenced by their environment, and too immature to weigh the consequences of their actions.

According to this these adolescents can also be brought back to the right track through counseling, even after they have committed the crime. Instead of terrifying them through the clauses of IPC, they can be rehabilitated and be corrected to become a good citizen, and we have our remand home for that matter. But punishing them as adult for the crime which they have committed as a result of the negative influence by their environment is quite unethical and unreasonable.

Western world have laws where even the juveniles are tried in civil court if they commit heinous crime, but they failed to curb the rising number of criminal offences which are committed by adolescents. It proves that if the resent cabinet approval comes as an act it will also fail.

We need to focus our legislation on the root causes of such crimes which are committed by the adolescents, such as poverty, broken families, unregulated access to pornography, lack of proper sexual education, or the failure of the child protection system, but the sad part is that we are more concern in punishing the innocents. The government seems to be blind in these key issues.

One truth is that juveniles who are graduated from adult jail might be more dangerous to the community. So it will lead to the giving birth of a higher risk criminal in punishing a lesser risk one.

Now the only hope left to us is the union parliament as the cabinet has approved the amendment, and hope that the union parliament will deal the matter precisely and save the right of the India's adolescent children.