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Juvenile Justice System in India
The state guarantees special treatment to them through statutory law. However, in practice, they often get victimized by legal and procedural entanglements
The emergence of the concept of juvenile justice in India owes much to the developments that have taken place in western countries, especially in the perception of children and human rights jurisprudence in Europe and America. The Apprentices Act, 1850 was the first legislation that laid the foundation of juvenile justice system in the country. The concept consequently gained momentum with the enactment of the Indian Penal Code (1860), Reformatory Schools Act (1897), Code of Criminal Procedure (1898) and recommendations made by the Indian Jail Committee (1919-1920), which categorically mentioned that the child offender should be treated differently from an adult offender. It also held that imprisonment of child offenders should be prohibited and recommended for provision of reformatory schools and constitution of children’s courts with procedures ‘as informal and elastic as possible’. The Committee also drew attention to the desirability of making provisions and special enactment for children who had not committed crime so far, but could do so in the near future on account of living in criminal or inhuman surroundings or those without proper guardians or homes.
The Madras Children Act 1920 was the first Children Act to be enacted, closely followed by Bengal and Bombay in 1922 and 1924, respectively. Later, many more states enacted their own Children Acts, covering within their sphere two categories of children, viz., (i) delinquent children, and (ii) destitute and neglected children. Both these categories of children were to be handled by the juvenile courts. They were to be kept in remand homes and certified schools or released on probation, with a possibility of imprisonment when the nature of offence was serious and the character of the offender so depraved as to justify imprisonment (Ved Kumari: 2004). During this period, by and large, the “welfare” approach was adopted for children – whether delinquent, destitute or neglected.
