What Can Be The Actual Reasons For Growing Juveniles Crime In India?

What Can Be The Actual Reasons For Growing Juveniles Crime In India?

Author: Mr. Aditya Aryan, ICFAI Law School, Dehradun.

The persons legally below 18 years of age are juveniles or minors. The number of crimes these persons are committing has raised at a very alarming rate for the last few years. This should be a very particular reason to worry for a country where 47.22 crore i.e almost 39% of the population is under 18.

The question lies is that, what is the actual reason that these kinds of juvenile crimes are increasing at such an alarming rate in our country?

Now poverty has always been a root cause behind the crimes but juveniles crimes are not occurred by just poor minors. Over the years, a fast-modified and developing society has introduced other insecurities. There is all kind of people who commit these crimes knowingly or unknowingly. They have a less matured and mind and most of the time they are unable to anticipate the consequences of such acts.

“Across the socio-economic and educational groups, children are affected by parents not spending quality time with them. Where both the parents are working, children grow up in a vacuum.

In middle-class families, parents have various expectations from the child, which includes high grades in school. This often makes the school environment a terrifying one for the child. When children fail to cope, discouragement may lead to substance abuse, and then crime. In high-income families, almost every convenience is provided to the child either by the desire of the parents to retain their own status in society or to convince the ego of the child. Such parents are often uncaring to the moral danger of over satisfaction.

Generally, juvenile crimes emerge out of sheer ignorance from family, friends, relatives which may lead them in further getting attracted to bad influence. According to a survey done by Commission for Protection of Child Rights in June, last year found that “a majority (70.3%) of the children who were serving in the detention centers were quite unaware of the consequences of their acts. It is deduced that being driven by the immediate rewards and other unique characteristics such as provocation, adventurism, and receptiveness to peer influence, they generally tend to make wrong choices.” Generally, these characteristics are true for adolescent offenders who have just reached puberty (between 15-18). Those in between such years resemble adults. They are full of strength and strong sexual desire, but their brain is yet to develop logic or reasoning power of their consequences.

The burden to ensure that the children do not wander off with bad influence lies with their parents and guardians. At home and at educational institutions, they need to observe the behavior of their children and behave like role models for the youngsters. According to a study it was suggested that the parents should be held legally liable for the offenses of their children so that the parents nurture their children in such a way that the possibility of their child’s breaking the law becomes negligible.

Early monitoring and counseling for those with criminal proneness are important so that they do not end up as offenders, also so that they don’t direct others to do the same. This is possible only when the parents are cognizant of what is wrong in the child’s behavior and alert to correcting them.

The main reason these crimes are occurred are

• Peer group pressure
• A high proportion of unsupervised time with peer
• Parental criminality
• Poor parental supervision
• Social isolation
• Low family income
• Family conflict
• Mental illness
• Drug abuse
• School exclusion

Other than these, there are more on list and children sometimes neglect the consequences of punishment as in India there is no strict law for juveniles and even for their high rated crimes, they don’t get severe punishment. They find it easy to get away with breaking the law.

These kinds of crimes can only be controlled by the supervision of parents and some time with the supervision and direction of psychologists on the children as the quality interaction with them can decrease the likelihood of the later’s antisocial delinquent behavior.

Children of the country are the future of the country, therefore it is necessary to supervise/direct and nurture them in such a manner so that they become an asset to the country and not a liability.