Number of poor, uneducated children taking to crime goes up: NCRB

The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report shows that while more and more children from poor families are taking to criminal activities, the number of juveniles repeating their offence has come down.

Updated on: Aug 21, 2015, 16:06:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report shows that while more and more children from poor families are taking to criminal activities, the number of juveniles repeating their offence has come down.

A majority of Delhi’s underage delinquents are dropouts with little support at home or school, says a child rights panel report. (Shutterstock Image)

These two definite trends emerging from the NCRB report could dent the National Democratic Alliance government's push to reduce the age at which a person accused of a serious crime such as, rape or murder can be tried as an adult, from 18 to 16 years old. A bill in this regard has already been passed in Lok Sabha and is pending in Rajya Sabha.

Recidivism – a person's relapse into criminal behaviour – among juveniles has come down drastically from 9.2% in 2013 to 5.4% in 2014. Of the total 48,230 juveniles arrested for various crimes in 2014, only 2,609 were repeat offenders, the lowest since 2007, the comparison of latest NCRB data with previous ones shows.

"Interestingly, even the data on recidivism does not warrant any regressive change in the juvenile justice law as proposed by the ministry of women and child development," said Bharti Ali of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights.

NCRB's report also points toward another disturbing trend that children from the poorest of backgrounds are increasingly taking to crime. Of the total juvenile offenders, 55.6% belonged to families with annual income of less than Rs 25,000. This means that their families on average have more than four members surviving on daily income of less than Rs 70.

What further aggravates their miseries is the lack of education.

Around 53% of juveniles apprehended in 2014 were either illiterate or educated only up to primary level or Class 5, one percentage point jump in two years. Half of these juveniles dropped out of school even before reaching Class 5.

The low education also means that a large number of juveniles are not qualified for the recently launched Skill India mission by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that promises decent jobs. The basic qualification for seeking skills under the mission is Class 10. Only 36.6% of juveniles had education between primary but below Class 10 or high secondary level.

Ali said the data showed that poverty and lack of education was pushing children into crime.

"Instead of addressing the issue, the government has proposed amendment to the juvenile justice law that will ruin any possibility of rehabilitation of children in conflict with law," she added.

These children also did not get justice on time. The NCRB data shows that in 83.5% of the cases the duration of trial was more than the mandated four to six months under the Juvenile Justice Act.

Such a delay in the delivery of justice cannot be justified as it has "severe psychological impact" on a young person, Ali said.

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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