Juvenile Crimes under the Influence of Drugs

The SPYM centre at Kingsway Camp in New Delhi houses drug-dependent children who have also been convicted of committing crimes. So as not to add any further to their trauma, direct questions are best avoided: one simply listens to their narratives and goes back to their case diaries should there be any dots to connect.

Yet in most cases the juveniles readily admit to their crimes, sometimes even with a sense of bravado. This is more so once confidentiality has been assured and trust gained. Then they open up about their lives, both past and present, quite easily.

Prolonged drug abuse has scarred some of them deeply. This was clear from their poor physique, erratic responses and sluggish body language. These of course are variable, alternately depending on the duration of their addiction, individual temperaments and family backgrounds.

Most of the children come from broken, dysfunctional homes that are in a perennial state of conflict. Drug-using youth from this teeming underclass are forced to do without the kind of social safety nets that many of us take for granted. And when they are arrested it is never easy for their parents or guardians to arrange for even small bail sureties.

While the sample size of these interviews with children in detention is limited, there is widespread criticism of the police who mostly are the first to intervene in such cases. And this came forth forcefully in these interviews as well.

Precept and Practice

The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights published an in-depth report in June 2015, titled Why Children Commit Offences: Study on Children in Conflict with Law in Delhi. The Commission entrusted the work to the child NGO Butterflies, and the report is available online.

One section examines the existing criminal justice system, and reports that though the JJ Act 2000, since amended, mandates humane treatment of children in conflict with the law, and there are well set guidelines, in practice these are seldom observed. It reports ‘Many were handcuffed, beaten up, forced to confess, falsely charge-sheeted and kept in police lockup for days along with other adult criminals.’

The report quotes one victim of violent abuse as saying, ‘I do not know what all they did to my body. They stomped on me with their boots, beat me left and right with lathis and when I asked for water assaulted me. They tortured me and my friends for 12 hours.’ Another person informed the researchers, ‘They slapped me repeatedly, dragged me to the floor, questioned me for three days using harsh methods like making me do headstands, stand naked, pinched my penis, forced me to do sit-ups keeping batons between my legs, etc.’  

Lamenting the ‘serious dearth of empirical and evidence-based information on juvenile delinquency,’ the report, based on extensive surveys of childcare institutions, says there is pressing need to make the juvenile justice system ‘more proactive and efficient in achieving the overarching aim of the Act: restoration, rehabilitation and reintegration of children in conflict with the law into society.’

It is these grey areas that most need to be monitored and addressed if there is to be change on the ground as well, and not just in the statutes. 

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