The Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act, 2000 - An Overview

Abstract

Children are to be treated and turned in the bud so that they will be rescued from becoming hardened ones. This necessitates the education-moral, religious and secular; training, treatment, correction and rehabilitation of the child. They cannot be equated with adults in matters of treatment and adjudication. Therefore there is need to have some independent machinery for adjudication and disposal of matters relating to child and for training, education and rehabilitation of children having committed offences or having been neglected. The General Assembly of United Nations has taken care of this by adopting Convention on Rights of the Child in 1989. In accordance with the International Convention on Rights of the Child, the Parliament of India has enacted the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act' 2O00 (hereinafter referred as the Act) which repeals the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986. The present paper is an endeavour to assess the provisions of the said Act. This paper attempts to examine whether the Juvenile Justice Act (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2O0O has achieved the desired goal? Whether machinery under the Act is working properly? Whether the Act is sufficiently able to give Justice to the Juveniles? Whether the changes brought by the New Act are proper and adequate? This paper concludes that, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 is inadequate and has failed to achieve the desired goal, and hence needs reconsideration.

Keywords: Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Delinquency, Child Rights