Criminalisation of Juvenile Justice: Questioning the Assumptions of Juvenile Transfer Laws in India

The development of juvenile transfer laws, against the backdrop of significant public outrage against a perceived increase in juvenile crime, has generated multiple debates, mostly centred on issues of child-inclusive justice versus crime mitigation and public safety agendas. The resulting legal developments have sought to instrumentalise punitive justice approaches, that facilitate the criminalisation of a sub-group of children (based on age and severity of crime), by articulating a limited and exclusionary conception of vulnerability. To bridge this gap, this article comprehensively evaluates the core assumptions of the juvenile transfer laws in India, through transdisciplinary considerations that integrate legal, rights-based and mental health perspectives, thereby making the analysis relevant to other legal jurisdictions with provisions for juvenile transfer. Alternative approaches to transfer, that adopt a rehabilitative and capacity-based justice orientation to culpability are discussed, to suggest crime prevention approaches cognizant of adolescent psychosocial vulnerabilities, and the need for mitigation of criminality.