Analysing India’s juvenile justice law from the lenses of restorative justice

Abstract

“An Eye for an eye and the whole world would be blind.” – Kahlil Gibran The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice express restorative justice (hereinafter as RJ) in the following words: “While most approaches to juvenile justice concentrate on punishing or treating delinquent youths, the restorative justice process seeks to repair the harm by involving the entire community in rehabilitating offenders and holding them accountable for their behavior”. RJ is a thought of criminal justice, keeping the hub on mending relations and reconciling the survivor. It can be put in through survivor-wrongdoer conciliation, community reparative boards, sentencing circles and family and society group conferencing, etc. It will repair the harm rather than just punishing the wrongdoer, making the process victim-friendly too, unlike the current criminal justice system. These properties of RJ can well be applied to Juvenile Justice System as well specially to keep children out of institutional care. The establishment of the first Reformatory institution for juveniles in India was in Bombay in 1843, and the passing of the earliest Act called the Apprentice Act was in 1850. Sections 82 and 83 of the Indian Penal Code gives certified and total exemption to a juvenile who has carried out a crime and has not completed the age of seven years; also, a child more than seven years but less than twelve years shall not be guilty who has not gained enough matureness during carrying out the offence. The burden is on the court to adapt means to find out the age of the offender. The Juvenile Justice Act, 19866 specified that boys below 16 years of age and girls below 18 years of age will be immune from adult treatment and punishment under the criminal justice system for breaking any law. Later the age bar of immunity for boys was also extended to eighteen years under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 20008 so that juvenile laws could conform with the Convention on Rights of Children.