Softer law for child offenders

The government proposes that juvenile offenders be allowed to stay with their families or in foster care, unless the police have branded them hardened criminals, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 18, 2007, 02:28:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government has proposed that juvenile offenders be allowed to stay with their families or in foster care, unless the police have branded them hardened criminals.

Rules have been drafted under the amended Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act to give the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) the authority to restore offenders below the age of 18 to their families, provided the latter sign a bond taking responsibility for imposing certain restrictions on the offender.

The board can also allow foster care of the child by an individual or a voluntary organisation, who too will have to sign the same bond. “The concept is similar to that in the western countries where a child offender can live with his family but with certain restrictions,” said an official with the ministry of women and child development (WCD).

The new rules circulated last week will be notified after receiving comments to bring the amended Act of 2006 in force.
The rules also prohibit the police from arresting children accused of crimes for which the maximum punishment is less than seven years — again, except if they are hardened criminals.

Nor can the police file a First Information Report (FIR) in such cases. They can only record information about the crime committed in the daily diary, along with a social background report on the juvenile allegedly responsible. Both these will have to be forwarded to the JJB before the first hearing of the case.

Even in crimes where arrest is allowed, the policemen undertaking the task should not be in uniform, the rules say. Immediately following the arrest, the child should be handed to a special Juvenile Police Unit, which in turn must present him before the JJB within 24 hours.

Shantha Sinha, chairperson of National Commission for Children, said: "Foster care, wherever possible, provides a better chance than just custodial care of integrating the child with the mainstream."

Ram Mangal Singh of the NGO Pratidhi, which works with victims of crime, however, said, "All will depend on the implementation. The record of most state governments, including Delhi's, in enforcing such ideas has been poor."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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