In this blog post, Apoorv Singh, IInd year student from NALSAR, Hyderabad  writes on possible reasons for minors committing crime, should the age for punishment be reduced from 18 to 16 and what possible affects will it have on the person if the age is reduced from 18 to 16.

The matter of juvenile being sentenced for three (3) years for the infamous Nirbhaya rape case has highlighted the issue of the easy getting away of minor for committing a heinous crime like rape. It has been argued and discussed since then that the minors should be treated as adults for committing the offence of rape.  The minister for child and women rights protection Mrs Manika Gandhi has given a reason for punishing the children of age group 16-18 as adults she states that the teenagers are involved in offences such as murder and rape because they are aware of the fact that they can easily get away and will have to face negligible consequences. According to the data collected by the NGO Pro Child Network only 1388 rape cases were registered against minors in the age group 16-18 years. The claim of the government is not justified by the statistics provided by the NGO, it looks like that this law is being amended merely on the basis of emotions. Due to the loophole in the laws, the minor convict in the Delhi gang rape case got a comparatively lesser punishment but this cannot be a justified by just changing the age limit from 18 to 16. What if a minor of the age 15 years and 11 months is involved in a heinous crime? He will get away with a punishment of 2-3 years. At that point of time will the government reduce the age limit to 14? This shall continue till this age limit is completely removed. The concept of juvenile will have to be done away with in future and everyone should be considered equal. But will that be justified?

Possible reasons for minors committing crimes

According to the reports by various child rights network and psychologists, the children of the age group 16-18 are not mature like adults, they are most of the time driven by their emotions, they have not reached a stage where they can control their emotions and think rationally. The kind of educational background also heavily impacts the thinking of the individual. No wonder that most of the teenage criminals come from a deprived background. If they are from the deprived background, many of them lack basic education how can the government claim that they commit crime at this age because they are aware of the fact that they can easily get away? The probability of the minor involved in the Delhi rape case knowing about the exclusion he will be getting because of him being a minor is quite low. He was not from such social setting to be aware of his legal rights.  The point here is not that he was any less guilty as he has not attained majority, the point is will this reducing the age limit create any kind of deterrence among the minors? As the crimes committed at this age are mostly not properly planned and are driven by passion treating them as adults will not create a deterrence among them.

What will happen if minors are considered as majors for awarding punishment

Keeping the minors in the same setup where the hardcore criminals are kept will also have a huge negative impact on their mindset. They may also turn into hardcore criminals instead of reforming and being a responsible citizen of the country. They need to be given counselling sessions for getting them back into the society and not to let them stay in the prison and abandon them from the society. The deterrence if it was created by giving capital punishment then there would be less number of rape cases after the Delhi rape case and the Mumbai Shakti mill case because in both the cases the accused were given the death penalty. But the things haven’t changed since then. The problem of reporting the consensual sex between the minors as rape is also a serious problem. If the age limit is reduced to 16 for rape cases than these minors will also be treated as adults and punished for having a sexual encounter. Mostly there is a tendency to report wrong cases in India by the parents if their minor girl elopes from home with her lover. Right now if the age of the boy is below 18, he is not harshly punished for crimes. But the situation changes once they are treated as adults.

The country has already failed in terms of certain promises done to its citizen. The RTE (right to education) grants right to every child under the age of 14 to be educated. There is a law against prevention of children to work in hazardous industries. Has the government fulfilled those promises? Is every child under the age of 14 educated? Are they not working in hazardous industries? If they are into crime is it the fault of the government that they were unable to protect innocent minds. Reducing the age of juvenile will only make them hardened criminals if kept in the same prison with adults.