NEW DELHI: Ten years after the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 came into force, a new study by the India Justice Report has exposed how the country’s juvenile justice system is crumbling under the same ills that plague adult courts – massive delays, crippling vacancies and shocking opacity. Children in conflict with the law, the very group the Act swore to protect in their “best interest”, are paying the heaviest price.As of Oct 31, 2023, more than 55,000 children were waiting for their cases to be decided, with 55% of the total cases pending before Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) across 18 states and two Union Territories. Out of 1,00,904 cases that came up before 362 JJBs in the year ending Oct 2023 (including 50,627 carried over from previous years), only 45,097 – a mere 45% – were disposed of. In Odisha the pendency rate touched a staggering 83%, while Karnataka managed to keep it at 35%. Nationally, the picture is grim: nearly one in every two cases simply rolls over to the next year.
The report, titled “Juvenile Justice and Children in Conflict with the Law: A Study of Capacity at the Frontlines”, is based on parliamentary answers, a year-long RTI inquiry and data from states (Nov 2022 to Oct 2023) . It reveals that one in every four JJBs – 24% or 111 out of 470 boards that responded – is functioning without the mandatory full bench of a principal magistrate and two social worker members. Only three states and Union Territories – Odisha, Sikkim and Jammu & Kashmir – have 100% fully constituted benches. With an average of 154 pending cases per board, the incomplete benches mean slower hearings, less child-sensitive decisions and prolonged institutionalisation of children.Perhaps the most alarming finding is that only 11 districts across the entire country meet the basic minimum standards required to deliver justice in a child’s best interest. Out of 292 districts that provided usable data on seven critical parameters – presence of a JJB, child welfare institution, special juvenile police unit, legal aid clinic, probation officer, staff strength and manageable pendency – just 11 cleared the bar. Eight of these are in Mizoram.Residential infrastructure for children in conflict with the law is equally dismal. Fourteen states, including large ones like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, have not established even a single “Place of Safety” for 16 -18-year-olds accused of heinous offences – a mandatory requirement under the Act. Facilities for girls are particularly scarce: only 40 homes nationwide can accommodate girls in conflict with the law, including those that house both genders.The study warns that the absence of proper facilities forces children to be shifted far from their families, making access to guardians and legal representation difficult and sometimes leading to unsafe mixing of age groups and offence categories – the very evils the 2015 Act was meant to end.Ten years on, the report concludes, India still cannot produce routine, public, time-series data to prove that its juvenile justice system is working optimally for the child. Instead, thousands of children remain trapped in limbo, bearing the brunt of a system that looks disturbingly similar to the broken adult criminal justice machinery it was supposed to be different from. Go to Source
