The Age of Criminal Reason

An adult for some crimes—and a juvenile for others?

If someone is between 16 and 18, the Indian state does not think him mature enough to vote; he is unfit to exercise a considered opinion on who should make the laws that govern him. When it comes to his right to get married, an Indian man is not thought fit to assume that responsibility till the age of 21. That is when he is allowed to be adult enough to start a family. When it comes to alcohol, his adulthood differs from state to state. In Maharashtra, he has to be 25 years old, but 18 and 21 are the general rules of thumb. He can’t do property transactions independently until he is 21. He can enlist in the armed forces by 16, but can’t get into active combat until he is 18. A slew of laws monitor, protect and legally emasculate an Indian if he is below 18 years old.

And now turn to the position taken by Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi that someone between 16 and 18 should be treated as an adult for serious crimes like premeditated murder and rape; he should not be allowed to get away with the three-years maximum imprisonment that the Juvenile Justice Act sets as of now. She argues that those who are in that age bracket and are committing these crimes will be scared if they get the same punishment as adult criminals.

It is true that teenagers commit serious crimes that are as terrible as any an adult can. The examples we have of this are some of the Shakti Mills gang rapists. Soon after Gandhi’s statement, a juvenile court sentenced two of them this week to three years in a correctional home. After their rape of a photojournalist, another woman came forward and said that she too had been raped by them. And there are probably more victims who are still unable to speak up. These are repeat offenders. The rest of the rapists in the case who were adults have all been given death sentences or life imprisonment. You could say being just a couple of years younger should not allow the two of them to get away with such a lenient sentence.

But the problem with treating juveniles like adults for a few crimes is not that they don’t deserve it, but because it is hypocritical. For instance, let us assume that a 16-year-old juvenile commits a crime which is not rape or premeditated murder; say, a robbery or a non-sexual assault. If such a juvenile is thought unfit to be tried as an adult for these crimes, then the principle behind it is not that the crime is lesser but that his judgment is impaired by virtue of his not understanding the implications of what he is doing as an adult would. And this principle has to be the same across all crimes. To say that he can think like an adult while raping someone but is still a child when picking someone’s pocket is somewhat contradictory.

The second problem is that no matter what the police or Maneka Gandhi say, it is hard to believe any juvenile is going to first evaluate the quantum of punishment before committing a premeditated murder or rape. To accept this argument would mean that juvenile offenders are okay with going to jail for three years. But does anyone, least of all someone who doesn’t think like an adult, ever commit a crime expecting to get caught?

crimejuvenileManeka Gandhirape