With calls for handling juvenile offenders sensitively acquiring heft on global platforms, India passed the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection of Children Act, 2000 (hereinafter JJ Act) that gave pertinence to rehabilitation measures. With the discretion vested in the Juvenile Justice Board, it is implicit that the Indian juvenile crime legislation and policy have become more punitive and have blurred the lines between juvenile and adult justice systems. Whether Indian juvenile justice system can now be labelled as a reformative and rehabilitative system when the retributive punishment policy is already chipped in under the new amendment? Whether Indian JJ Act is equipped to deal with the complexities involved when both the offender and the victim are juveniles? The author is a research scholar at the Indian Law Institute and an Assistant professor at the Symbiosis Law School, Noida

Source: dna December 01, 2017 02:48 UTC