Representative image only. File
More than half (55%) of the cases before the 362 Juvenile Justice Courts (JJB) remained pending as of 31 October 2023, although 92% of India’s 765 districts constituted a JJB, the body dealing with children in conflict with the law, conviction rates vary widely, from 83% to 3% in Karnataka, Odisha first-of-its-kind study “Juvenile Justice and Children in Conflict with the Law: A Study of Capacity at the Frontlines’ by India Justice Report (IJR) published on Thursday (November 20, 2025).
Unlike the National Judicial Data Grid, there is no central and public repository of JJB information. For the study, IJR filed more than 250 RTI applications and responses from 21 states, which revealed that JJBs disposed of only less than half of the 1,00,904 cases as of October 31, 2023.
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In addition, vacancies in the juvenile justice system (24% of JJBs were not fully established) and insufficient legal aid (30% of JJBs do not have an attached legal services clinic) led to high workloads in key functions.
On average, 154 cases remained pending with each JJB per year. In addition, insufficient data monitoring and funding have created serious constraints on the implementation of juvenile justice.
According to India Crime Data 2023, 40,036 juveniles were apprehended in India in 31,365 cases under the Indian Penal Code and special and local laws. More than three out of four children involved were between the ages of 16 and 18.
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In the decade since the Youth Justice (Care and Protection) Act 2015, the IJR study found that the decentralized architecture to deliver child-centred services suffers from systemic gaps, including a lack of inter-agency coordination and data sharing.
The IJR study framed 16 questions on the capacity of the juvenile justice system to four nodal agencies, i.e. State Police Directorate, Ministry of Women and Child Development, State Child Protection Society (SCPS) and State Legal Services Authority (SLSA).
More than 500 responses were received from 28 states and two UTs covering 530 districts. Of these 500 responses, 11% were rejected outright, 24% received no response, 29% were transferred to districts and 36% were provided by state hubs, indicating a weak culture of public data sharing and transparency.
Maja Daruwala, Editor-in-Chief of India Justice Report, said: “The specially designed juvenile justice system has a pyramid structure. Its optimal functioning relies on information regularly flowing from first responders in individual institutions, such as police stations and nursing homes, up to oversight bodies at the district, state and national levels. Yet IJR’s efforts to access reliable data from all non-regular bodies do not even obtain routine evidence from them they routinely approved. because of the data, the oversight is episodic and the accountability is empty.”
Added Justice Madan B. Lokur, a former judge of the Supreme Court of India: “The IJR study reveals gaps in our juvenile justice system. Despite 10 years since the implementation of the JJ Act in 2015, the finding that a quarter of JJBs did not have a full bench and evidence of a significant number of children in child care institutions lacking child care jobs is disturbing.” He further said that inadequate and patchy data from RTI is a matter of concern.
“It is essential that a national child-focused data grid integrates information on the functioning of the juvenile justice system and that all involved authorities regularly publish standardized data on their functioning in relation to children. Until an information backbone is built and used, the system cannot truly serve the best interests of the child,” he added.
Published – 20 Nov 2025 12:46 IST
