Juvenile Justice in the Digital Age: Legal Responses to Cybercrime, Online Grooming, and Children in Conflict with the Law

The promise of juvenile justice hasn’t changed in the information age. A child who has committed an offence should be understood and helped and a child who has been harmed should be protected and heard. What has changed is the context. India has a number of well-intentioned laws in place to protect children online but they operate in silos. Some of the most important ones (such as the parental consent provisions under the data protection law) have yet to come into force. The real challenge is coordination. We need to have a clear understanding of what constitutes an offence, we need to be able to properly administer electronic evidence, we need to have the right institutions in place and we need rehabilitation that is relevant to the child’s online world. The real test is whether the system can protect the child on one side of the screen and reform the child on the other, with an awareness that in many cases they are the same child.

[1]  UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World (2017). [2]  Sonia Livingstone, John Carr & Jasmina Byrne, One in Three: Internet Governance and Children’s Rights (Global Comm’n on Internet Governance, Paper Series No. 22, 2015). [3]  Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, No. 2 of 2016, India Code (2016). [4]  Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20th November 1989, 1577 U.N.T.S. 3. [5]  U.N. Comm. on the Rts. of the Child, General Comment No. 25 (2021) on Children’s Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment, U.N. Doc. CRC/C/GC/25 (2 Mar. 2021). [6]  Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, No. 32 of 2012, India Code (2012). [7]  Information Technology Act, 2000, No. 21 of 2000, India Code (2000). [8]  Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, No. 45 of 2023, India Code (2023). [9]  Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, No. 46 of 2023, India Code (2023). [10]  Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, No. 47 of 2023, India Code (2023).