Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant on Saturday inaugurated the National Annual Stakeholders Consultation to mark 10 years of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, calling for a shift from counting cases to counting lives rebuilt.
The two-day consultation on “Ten Years of the JJ Act: Progress, Challenges and Priorities for the Next Decade” is being organised by the Juvenile Justice Committee of the Supreme Court led by Justice B.V. Nagarathna in association with UNICEF at the Auditorium, C-Block, Administrative Buildings Complex, Supreme Court.
The CJI also released the e-Compendium of landmark judgments under the Act. Beginning with a personal illustration, the CJI asked the gathering to “picture a 15-year-old brought before a Juvenile Justice Board in January 2016, the month this Act came into force, who would be about twenty-five today.”
“Ten years is a short time in the life of a statute, but it is more than half of a childhood,” the CJI said, adding that the Act “should be judged by how far it has made such a journey possible for all those it serves.”
Underlining the philosophical shift in the 2015 law, the CJI said: “Where the law of 2000 spoke of a ‘child’ in need of care and protection but of a ‘juvenile’ in conflict with law, Parliament in 2015 chose to call both of them as ‘children’.” He emphasized, “The phrase ‘child in conflict with law’ describes a circumstance, not an identity.”
Noting that stories of children before Boards often speak of schooling cut short, families under strain and poverty, the CJI observed: “Very often, the child in conflict with law today was, only a little earlier, a child in need of care and protection whom we did not reach in time.”
“Our answer to such a predicament is restoration, not retribution,” the CJI said. The Act, he said, flows from Articles 15(3) and 39 of the Constitution and the Convention on the Rights of the Child which looks to the young assuming a “constructive role in society.”“This is no mere courtesy,” he said of child-friendly procedures, adding, “the 2015 Act thus makes a wager that a child given a second chance is far more likely to become a productive member of society than one branded as a criminal.”
He clarified, “None of this amounts to a promise of impunity,” and said the law “does not ask us to forget the harm that may have been caused; it asks us to remember that the one who caused it is still a child.”
Flagging systemic gaps, the CJI stressed training and coordination. “Those who work together should not be trained in separate rooms,” he said, calling for regular joint training of police, Boards and probation officers with psychologists through Judicial and Police Academies.
Calling Social Investigation Reports crucial, he said filling vacant probation officer posts “is a condition of justice, so that no Board decides a future without first knowing the story behind it.”
On legal aid, he said, “A child must not only be heard but also be understood,” and urged creation of a dedicated wing of trained defence counsel from “the very first hour” at the police station till rehabilitation.
On reintegration, the CJI warned: “Rehabilitation that ends at the gate of an institution is not rehabilitation at all.” He called for enforceable individual care plans, community service options, and protecting children from stigma by destroying records on time and keeping names “out of the news and off the internet.”“For 10 years, we have counted cases; for the next 10, let us also count the lives we have helped rebuild,” the CJI said.
The post At JJ Act 10-year review, CJI Surya Kant says lives rebuilt should be counted, not just cases appeared first on India Legal.