#dnaEdit:Delhi gang-rape victim's parents raised valid concerns about juvenile’s early release

The impending release of the juvenile involved in the December 16 gang-rape has alarmed the victim’s parents, and rightly so. The rapist, now nearly 21 years of age, was sentenced to three years in a correctional facility by a Juvenile Justice Board. This is the maximum sentence mandated by the Juvenile Justice Act. Given the barbarity of the crime and the horrifying injuries inflicted on the victim, the brief three-year sentence, no doubt, reveals the inadequacy of the JJ Act. 

It must be acknowledged that adolescent criminals deserve to be treated with greater leniency than criminal adults. They must be treated with sympathy and given a productive opportunity to reform themselves. At the same time, crimes like rape and murder that are generally associated with adulthood — in addition to the violent nature and magnitude of these acts — need to be factored into the processes of justice delivery. Currently, the JJ Act does not make such a distinction. While the Cabinet has approved the trial of juveniles accused of committing heinous adult crimes, the impasse in Parliament has delayed the proposed amendments in the JJ Act.

For the victims of heinous crimes and their relatives, justice ceases to lose meaning when the perpetrator gets away with as light a sentence as the juvenile in the December 16 gang-rape case has received. The parents of the December 16 gang-rape victim have petitioned the National Human Rights Commission for putting in place measures that would protect citizens from criminal juveniles after their release from detention centres. The parents want a preemptive mechanism to strictly monitor these criminals — let off too early — and prevent them from hurting others. 

But given the poor state of policing, it is unlikely that such monitoring efforts can be sustained. The JJ Act does provide for probation officers to follow up on juveniles after their release from correction homes. But probation officers across India have routinely complained about their excessive workload, especially, in light of the failure of state governments to sanction more posts or fill vacancies. The government is now building a new criminal tracking database but while this may facilitate running better background checks on skilled and white collar workers, unskilled criminals like the juvenile in this case, are more likely to melt into the sprawling and unwieldy informal sector. 

Even as the number of crimes committed by juveniles have increased, so has the number of heinous crimes committed by them. The number of rape cases against juveniles has gone up from 63 in 2012 to 163 in 2013.

Unfortunately, we have no statistics on recidivism, a major failing, because that would have helped us understand better the success or failure of the reformatory mechanisms envisaged under the Juvenile Justice Board. But the poor management and inadequate infrastructure of juvenile homes have been highlighted following the many incidents of violence that have erupted among inmates and between inmates and supervisors, even in cities like Delhi. While child rights activists have warned that longer spells in detention would increase recidivism, our broken systems can hardly be expected to offer a worthwhile opportunity for juvenile reformation. 

Media reports claim that the Delhi Police is toying with the possibility of booking the juvenile under an anti-terror provision in the stringent National Security Act over the suspicion that a fellow inmate, accused in the Delhi high court blasts, may have radicalised him during detention. It is however doubtful if this attempt at imprisoning the accused would pass judicial scrutiny. Ironically, while authorities can summon a tough law to imprison people for allegedly professing dangerous beliefs, there is no legal recourse available to deliver a sentence proportionate to the scale of the violent sex crime committed by the juvenile rapist. The juvenile in the December 16 gang-rape may regain his freedom soon, but that is not a comforting thought for women whose fundamental demand for safe public spaces are yet to be met with suitable action from the authorities concerned.