Tackling juvenile delinquency
The matter of juvenile delinquency is a most complex and sensitive issue. It not only impinges upon that section of society that is considered to be more precious than the rest, it raises critical questions on the manner in which punishment can be met out that will gain justice and provide rehabilitation, it also puts one in a difficult position of ascertaining who really is to be blamed.
Given that we understand children to have lesser developed minds which are more a result of direct nurture than self-predicament, the task of pointing fingers in the right direction towards the true criminal becomes a most unnerving aspect. When the horrific Nirbhaya gang-rape case occurred in 2012 aside, the gore of the entire heinous act the most shocking part was the involvement of a juvenile.
Prior to that, debates on juvenile justice had never attained importance at a national scale. In extreme crimes of rape and murder—can we categorise a 'child' or 'teenager' simply by his/her age, erasing the magnanimity of the act which doesn't correspond to their category of juvenile? Unlike prisons, juvenile justice homes play a positive role in rehabilitation. As has been exhibited in the case of the 16-year old involved with Ram Singh in rampaging Nirbhaya's body, he now works as a cook in a roadside dhaba. Housed at the 'Majnu ka Tila' shelter home, authorities remember the boy as undergoing enormous transformation during his time at the home.
A young boy who had fled at the age of 11, he fell into wrong company and worked as a cleaner in the notorious Ram Singh's bus. A lack of education, complete poverty, and unguided growth during his most tender years, presented us with this—a young adult without rationality exhibiting the most animalistic tendencies. While we highlight Nirbhaya's rape accuse juvenile as one, there are many such children who are growing in the shanties and slums across India plunged into abject poverty, growing with a wrath towards the system which is eventually reflected in heinous ways. While poverty and its psychological turmoil is harnessing criminality among the lesser privileged, the more privileged aren't entirely excluded from the whiplash of juvenile criminality. The Ryan School murder of a young seven-year-old boy, still under investigation, is now pointing fingers to a 17-year old from the same school as the possible face behind the ruthless attack on the little boy. Reasons: to delay exams and postpone an impending parent-teacher meeting.
From the cruelty of poverty which is not palpable to most of us sitting in air-conditioned rooms, the other face of harbouring criminality is etched in an element intrinsic to the modern world—the quest to voraciously outdo one another, even if in the slightest platform of annual exams. Our education system, just like it is capable of creating magic, the human mind unlike machines is also able to garner the most awful thoughts and actions. If we take for granted a failed education system, then the emphasis comes, in modern society, on parenting.
The role of parents, as days go by, is amplified, because of the horrible things that are harbingered in the outside world. Yet, is only parenting enough? What about the world that is thriving despite parenting. We are really living in a complex world where each answer is only succeeded by some more questions, and some more answers to some more apprehensions. There seems to be no way out of checking our children who are growing with a lowly mentality and exhibiting actions that we as adults would shudder to perceive. The boy accused of killing Ryan's Pradhyumn is facing the wrath of larger society and his parents have been devastated though they are compelled to fight for the dignity of their son.
The victim's parent demands that he be treated as an adult as his murder was "heinous, barbaric, diabolical, cold-blooded and rarest of the rare." Undoubtedly so, yet, it hardly provides a solution. It is unfathomable what could have driven a 17-year old mind to find rationality in this obviously ruthless, inhumane act. There are assumptions of underlying mental health conditions which clearly haven't been well tackled. Treating him as an adult and convicting him, would hardly rehabilitate him anymore.
There is no doubt that his crime was cruel, but was he the real criminal behind the crime? Juvenile justice rattles our ideas of what can be called rational criminality and what is subjected crime-making. We must do better as a society, our children deserve a better childhood, as do parents deserve a more secure parenthood.
