What is the CPI(M) stand on the Juvenile Justice Bill which is before the parliament? Premalatha, Delhi THE CPI(M) is opposed to the amendment to the Juvenile Justice Act which seeks to lower the age of the juvenile from 18 to 16 years. We do not oppose other amendments in the Bill. It is also important to state at the outset that the CPI(M) is not influenced by the utterly motivated propaganda that if the amendment is passed, the juvenile in the Nirbhaya case will not be allowed to go free. This is an utter lie. The amendment does not have retrospective effect. It will have no impact at all on the Nirbhaya case. The CPI(M) opposition to lowering the age to 16, is in tune with the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child which India ratified in 1992 and which led to the raising of the age of the juvenile in the JJ Act from 16 to 18 by Vajpayee government in 2000; it is in tune with the Supreme Court judgment of 2014 which had rejected the eight petitions which had been filed to lower the age of a juvenile to 16; it is in tune with the Verma Commission which was set up after the Nirbhaya atrocity to make recommendations to change the law and which stated categorically against any knee jerk reaction to lower the age; it is in tune with the Parliamentary Standing Committee which examined the said amendment and unanimously opposed it on grounds that it was violative of the Constitution. The main scientific reason accepted by the UN and also by the various reports quoted above is that “studies of adolescent anatomy clearly indicate that regions of the brain that regulate such things as foresight, impulse control, resistance to peer pressure are in a developing stage upto the age of 18. These are normative phenomenon that a teenager cannot control and not a pathological illness or defect…” These words were used in the Supreme Court judgment of 2014. This is not a justification for juveniles committing crime but it points to the need to find ways to address it. The very basis for a separate Act for juveniles is because unlike criminal law dealing with adults, in this case the very purpose of the Act is to reform the individual. The argument is advanced that there is an increase in juvenile crime which requires stringent laws. It is true that there is an increase in juvenile crime, but that is only one part of the picture. In India, crime in general has increased significantly. However juvenile crime as a proportion of total crime has not increased. For the last five years, it has been the same at 1.5 percent of total crime. Even more significantly the percentage of juveniles who repeat offences has actually come down in the last five years from 12.5 percent to around 5 percent. Those who believe that sending sixteen year olds to jail will stop juvenile crime want to ignore the social realities. Who are the majority of these juveniles in conflict with the law? Of the 48,230 juveniles in custody in 2014, only 439 belonged to families who had an annual income over 4 lakh rupees. 37,000 of the juveniles belonged to families whose income was less than 6000 rupees a month or 50,000 rupees a year. Does this mean that because they are poor, the crimes should be ignored? No, not at all, but to ignore socio-economic characteristics of juvenile crime and to think that crime will be stopped by sending a 16 year old to adult jails is more likely to create hardened criminals. A country like the United States of America has a juvenile age of between 12 to 14 years in different states. According to one assessment there were 1.6 million arrests of children in 2009-2010. In other assessment on any given day, there are 10,000 children in adult US jails across the country. Has it controlled juvenile crime? On the contrary, US continues to have the highest crime rates among juveniles in the world. In India, the present maximum term of three years in the JJ Act could have been enhanced through an amendment that after three years there could be a system of a half way home in which the released juvenile/adult could stay being monitored and supervised to assist his/her mainstreaming with the aim of reform not vengeance.