Inevitably, the country’s dysfunctional legal system characterised by chaos and humungous delays, and a tradition of chronic neglect of children of the socio-economically disadvantaged, has converged to weigh upon young offenders lodged in government-run observation homes, meant for the temporary reception of “children in conflict with the law”. According to the Child Rights Trust, Bangalore statistics, currently 200,000 juveniles (below age 18) are lodged in 5,000 observation homes countrywide. Those convicted are later sent to juvenile justice homes (aka borstals), where they are lodged for reform and rehabilitation.
The world over, minors who commit criminal offences are placed on a different footing from adult criminals. Whereas the latter are prosecuted for crimes against society and public order, juvenile offenders are perceived as youth gone astray, whom the state and society needs to counsel and rehabilitate. However conditions in Dickensian government-run obser-vation homes characterised by corruption, over-crowding, rotten food and insanitary conditions are so bleak that most young offenders yearn for the relative safety of the streets.
This was surely the motivation behind a mass breakout from an observation home (OH) in Madivala, a suburb of Bangalore, on February 7. Four youths in their early 20s vandalised the OH office and attempted to flee the home with other children aged between ten-18 joining in the affray and failed mass breakout, until a police contingent restored normalcy. The four leader youth had been lodged in the OH as minors but due to the law’s delay in hearing the cases against them, continued to stay on in the home even after they turned 20.
On the statute book the laws relating to caring for, counseling and rehabilitating young offenders, are unexceptionable. Under s.14 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, cases filed against young offenders “shall be completed within a period of four months from the date of commencement,” with exceptions if the “period is extended by the board having regard to the circumstances of the case and in special cases after recording the reasons in writing for such extension”.
However this exception provision has permitted cases to languish in the system way beyond four months — sometimes for years — for petty reasons such as transfer of the principal magistrate, lack of case workers, charge-sheets not being filed in time, procrastination of lawyers, dearth of probation officers, and paucity of juvenile justice board (JJB) members.
“Cases in each district are supposed to be adjudicated by a three-member board — the principal magistrate and two social workers from the fields of child rights, children’s education or child welfare. But since the state government hasn’t constituted all juvenile justice boards yet, young offenders are held in observation homes longer than they should be. Therefore the first priority should be for the state government to establish fully-staffed JJBs in all of the state’s 30 districts,” says Nina Nayak, chairperson of the Karn-ataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR).
However this is easier said than done. Poor pay and working conditions have made the juve-nile justice system unattractive for legal and childcare profess-ionals. “The responsibilities of a JJB member are many and the remuneration low — Rs.150 per sitting. Moreover the state government is not actively recruiting juvenile justice system professionals even though the number of minor offenders is rising continuously,” complains Vasudeva Sharma, a member of KSCPCR.
Unsurprisingly, the major cause of Karnataka’s dysfunctional juvenile justice system is inadequacy of funding necessary to support it. In the state government’s budget 2011-12, a mere Rs.5.2 crore has been allocated for child protection services, including maintenance of the juvenile justice system. Given the state’s child population is 26 million, of whom an estimated 5 percent are juvenile offenders, the outlay is grossly inadequate. “The commission has recently sent a detailed list of recommendations to the government to improve juvenile justice and care in the state. We are waiting for their feedback,” says Nayak.
Given that the major preoccupation of the BJP government in the state is politicking and defending itself against a rising tide of corruption cases, it will be a long — if not indefinite — wait.
Rutaksha Rawat (Bangalore)