It has been strongly felt that in the case of a child between the ages of 16-18 years, committing a heinous offense, the offense in which the minimum punishment of more than Seven years, we have somehow compromised with the principle of 3Rs which is the basic building block of the Child Right laws.
In this case, most of the children ultimately land in regular adult prisons after attaining the age of 21 years and consequently, they come out as seasoned and hard-core criminals, hence spoiling all the efforts to Reform, Rehabilitate, and Reintegrate such children.
In most of such cases, we actually turn a child into a criminal instead of converting them into a maker of the history we turn them in a spoiler of the history. Such children have the right to be reintegrated into the family and society at large.
The ‘Sambhavna Ki Khoj’ is an endeavor towards reforming a child, between 16-18/21 years of age who has committed a heinous offence and is in institutional care.
These children are put into an Institution called a ‘Place of Safety ‘from their apprehension/arrest to the age of 21 years and if there is reform in the child by the age of 21 years, Section 20 of the Juvenile Justice ( Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, provides them to be released else they will be sent to regular Adult Prison, for the rest of the period of punishment, losing even the remotest probability to reform.
Sambhavna- CRACR & PD strongly feels that these children also have the right to reform, rehabilitate, and reintegrate, after bringing reform in them. A child, between the ages of 16 to 18 who has committed a heinous offense has a maximum of five years of life for reform, only in the case when the child has committed such crime at the age of 16 years, and in other such cases the life span for reform is even less.
We at Sambhavna- CRACR & PD, call it, ‘Critical Life Time Span (CLTS)’. We at our platform, related to mental health issues ‘Hifazat’ have discussed the issue at length and have reached the conclusion that most of these children can be reformed.
We have also found that Childhood experiences play a major role in developing such acutely juvenile personality. However, it is hard to wash such experiences from the memory of the child but not impossible.
Through our project, ‘Sambhavna ki Khoj’ we are determined to save the lives of the children mentioned above, by preventing them from converting into hardened criminals and reforming into a responsible citizen, by way of interventions during the currency of CLTS.
