Child Protection and Juvenile Justice: Rehabilitation Over Punishment

Few areas of justice matter more than how a society treats its most vulnerable: children. ICGCV 2026 organised at Parul University, focused on discussions about law, justice and child protection. That is Child Protection and Juvenile Justice. The session was taken by Dr. Smita Dharmamer. She is an Associate Director at the Aangan Trust. She is a founding member of India’s prison-nursery movement (which supports the children of incarcerated parents).  Research was also conducted. Three university student researchers presented work. It pointed towards prevention, rehabilitation, not punishment and they are the heart of juvenile justice.

It is always a good decision to help a young person at an early stage. Before the things get worse. Mr. Aayush Bokade, the Ph.D scholar at Rashtriya Raksha University, pointed that the right time or perfect time to help a young person is at the early stages, before the problem becomes serious. He did research on these topics. His research gave a culturally appropriate screening tool. The tool helps to identify early signs of behavioural difficulty in ordinary. School-going adolescents, teenagers who have no diagnosed disorder, so that support can reach them at the earliest stage. Noting that widely used scales are often developed in Western contexts, he built a tool suited to Indian family, cultural, and social realities. Validated with 1,000 students across urban, semi-urban, and rural schools, it was refined into a short, four-factor instrument (covering empathy, behaviour, emotional regulation, and social connectedness) that takes only minutes to complete. His central finding was hopeful: strong, supportive relationships at home and school act as a protective factor, and early, proactive support can prevent difficulties from escalating, easing the burden on both children and professionals.

Ms. Manvi Sinha of Jharkhand Raksha Shakti University (presenting research with Ms. Amrita and Dr. Ruchi Gautam) went deeper into a difficult question: not just who offends, but why, and what happens when they return to society. Through interviews with juveniles across three observation homes in Jharkhand, and with staff to corroborate their accounts, her team found that no child offends because of a single cause. Instead, a combination of factors, weak family relationships, school discontinuation, poverty, and inadequate support, accumulates before an offence ever occurs. Just as important, she highlighted what happens after: on release, young people often face stigma, community rejection, and limited education and livelihood options, conditions that can push them back toward offending. Her policy recommendations were practical and child-centred:

• Regular, dedicated counselling, addressing a severe shortage where one counsellor may be responsible for a hundred or more juveniles.
• Legal-awareness programmes in schools, so young people understand the law before they encounter it.
• Never placing minors in adult jails, which exposes them to harmful influences and lasting damage.
• Continued education inside observation homes, so a child’s learning does not stall, and strong family and emotional support to aid reintegration.

Ms. Mahi Gadhvi of RV University compared India’s juvenile justice system with those of Norway and New Zealand, widely regarded as models of rehabilitative youth justice. Tracing India’s evolution from harsh colonial-era systems toward a modern, welfare-focused approach, she stressed that because children’s minds are still developing, the system should focus on correcting behaviour rather than simply punishing it. She was particularly drawn to New Zealand’s “family group conferences,” which bring the child, family, and (if they wish) the victim together, holding the family accountable and rebuilding the child’s sense of belonging. This, she argued, is exactly what India needs, especially where families disengage once a child is in an observation home, deepening the isolation that fuels re-offending. India’s own framework, she noted, emphasises rehabilitation: children under a certain age receive support through mental-health and social services rather than imprisonment, with restorative and community-based measures central to the system.

In closing, Dr. Dharmamer offered constructive guidance, and an important clarification of the legal history: India passed its first UNCRC-aligned juvenile legislation in 2000, later rewritten as the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, while colonial-era systems are long redundant. She also reminded the room that a researcher’s role is to highlight where a system can improve, not to hand down legal verdicts, a valuable lesson for the young scholars present.

Across all three presentations, one theme held: protecting children means seeing them as children. It means intervening early, understanding the circumstances that lead a young person astray, keeping them out of harmful environments, and giving them the education, counselling, and family support to rebuild their lives. A justice system that does this, the session showed, does more than reduce re-offending; it honours the dignity and potential of every child.

Also Read: How Green Criminology Works, Discussed at Parul University.