Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill, 2015

                                With the Rajya Sabha passing the new Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill 2015 , our parliamentarians have demonstrated a paradigm shift in there approach towards tackling crime in a pragmatic manner where the recognition of the rights of the victims is considered equally important as the rights of juveniles. The amended Juvenile Justice Bill became a necessity as 1.2% of most heinous crimes in country are committed by juveniles and over 50% are sex offences.

                                 With passage of new Bill Juvenile Board now has discretion to try juveniles committing horrendous crimes as adults between age group of 16 to 18. If the nature of the crime is critical, why stop at age 18 and not 16?  The Bill permits juveniles above the age of 16 years to be tried as adults for heinous offences if the Juvenile Justice Board finds the juvenile fit to be tried as an adult based on a preliminary assessment with regard to his mental and physical capacity to commit such an offence, ability to understand the consequences of the offence and the circumstances in which he allegedly committed the offence.

                               There's alarming rise in criminal offences involving juveniles, thus Juvenile Justice Bill was the need of the hour and it might act as deterrent discouraging juveniles while helping law enforcement agencies too.Equally important is the classification of crimes by juveniles, the young age and pitiable crime shouldn't come under the purview of the law and should be dealt leniently considering young age and scope for improvement (rehabilitation) with societal support.

                              Nation also needs to seriously debate why their is increase in number of juvenile crimes. Isn't there a wrought in society that's growing unabated and criminal offences by adolescents a true and worrying reflection to society ? Serious debate involving child psychologists & sociologists is necessary to get to the bottom and stem the rot through corrective measures .The ultimate goal of society should be the care, protection, maintenance, welfare, training, education and rehabilitation of neglected or delinquent children along with safety and wellbeing of vulnerable.