{"id":116307,"date":"2013-04-04T14:28:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T08:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=116307"},"modified":"2013-04-04T14:28:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T08:58:20","slug":"how-to-lose-trust-and-alienate-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/how-to-lose-trust-and-alienate-children\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Lose Trust and Alienate Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

He’s seventeen and a half. A series of parallel welts run up his arms, rising in ridges from his dark skin \u2014 mementos of knife fights and blade slashes. He returned the previous night from a juvenile detention centre. It was the fourth time he\u2019d been arrested in the past two-and-a-half years. The charge this time was attempted murder. He had brawled with a group of boys who had \u201ccome to settle some old scores\u201d.
\nHe says he\u2019s happy to be back here in the narrow alleys of Trilokpuri in East Delhi. He enjoys eating eggs, so his mother made him some for dinner. Still, he glances nervously around him at the women and children peering from the balconies and terraces overhead.
\nIn this crowd, he\u2019s alone. Disdained by society, but, more importantly, ill-served by a juvenile justice system that is insensitive to any need beyond the most basic. This is a system that barely puts up any pretence of following through with its rehabilitative purpose. In its indifference, it has failed and continues to fail the city\u2019s children.
\nBack in December last year, the Delhi gangrape brought juvenile crime under intense scrutiny. With it came a clamour for harsher punishments and demands that 16- year-olds be tried as adults. Opinions seesawed between the bloodthirsty and the kneejerk, between blaming the kids and blaming the system.
\nOn the one hand, anecdotal evidence indicated that juvenile crime in Delhi had been increasing. Children seemed to be coming of age faster, moving into crime by their mid-teens. Were harsher punishments the solution? On the other, critics of the system were quick to put the blame on the brutality juveniles have to face in shelter homes in Delhi, both government-run and private.
\nThese homes, they said, were overcrowded and understaffed. Drug abuse was rampant, as was sodomy and rape. This was an exaggeration. No one denies that in Delhi there have been brutal incidents in juvenile homes, but these have been few and far between. Contrary to what was being reported, the system was not evil. Children were bullied, usually by older boys, but were not tortured by officials. The food might not have been the best, but there was enough of it. In fact, conditions didn\u2019t compare badly with living at the railway station or in a small shack in a Delhi slum.
\nBut evil is easily recognised and the solution is clear \u2014 put an end to it. Official apathy, the kind that suffocates even the best intentions, is far more damaging. In Trilokpuri, the reaction to the gangrape intensified the stigma this (unrelated) juvenile offender faced. In this poor neighbourhood, where houses are unpainted brick rooms stacked precariously on top of each other and streams of sewage zigzag along the streets, life can be rough and unforgiving. Word had already crept out that he was back.
\nNearby, a group of boys loiters in one of the lanes, keeping a keen eye on passersby. One of them brandishes a long wooden stick. \u201cHe came back last night, didn\u2019t he,\u201d he says. \u201cThat murderer.\u201d
\nThousands of juveniles, especially in the poorer parts of the city, come into conflict with the law. Some are rehabilitated, mostly by the shock of getting entangled with the police. It\u2019s a matter of luck rather than judgment. For most, like the boy from Trilokpuri (who cannot be named because he is still a juvenile), it\u2019s a slippery downward slope to further criminal activity. Until the gangrape, this moribund system was mostly ignored. Then, overnight, things changed. Those demanding that the age of juvenility be brought down had forgotten that it had been increased from 16 to 18 a little over a decade ago. They also seemed to have overlooked the fact that juveniles under 16 were also committing violent crimes.
\nChanging the age was just fiddling with numbers. It wasn\u2019t what was going to fix a system that was trying to address a disconcerting dilemma \u2014 rehabilitating juveniles without punishing them; being gentle on those caught while still being a deterrent to those outside.
\nThere were other confounding issues. In the popular perception, street children are most commonly associated with juvenile crime. Their lives are brutal and abused. Crime is assumed to be the natural corollary. But according to the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2010-11, of 33,387 juveniles arrested countrywide, 81.3 percent lived with their parents. Homeless children, perhaps because of their extreme vulnerability, stay clear of any confrontation with the law, accounting for just 5.7 percent.
\nOf the juveniles arrested, 31,909 were boys, and 64 percent were between 16 and 18 years of age. The bulk of the crimes were theft and causing injury. Evidence indicates that these national patterns are reflected in Delhi.
\nA child\u2019s first encounter with the system in Delhi is with the police. Every police station in the city is supposed to have two juvenile welfare officers, who handle juvenile crime and who, together with social workers and the district\u2019s top police official, form the district\u2019s Special Juvenile Police Unit (SJPU).
\nThe apprehended juvenile is handed over to one of three Juvenile Justice Boards, the equivalent of courts, which decide how they need to be rehabilitated. During their trials, which typically last not more than six months, children accused of graver crimes are kept in one of the four \u2018observation homes\u2019. The sprawling, eerily empty compound of the Sewa Kutir complex in North Delhi, once a home for beggars, now houses a juvenile court, an observation home and a new detox centre for children.
\nThe observation home and centre are sequestered behind high walls and fences, but the court, which sits in a room at the corner of the complex, is open to everyone.
\nIn practice, most of these children are released on \u2018bail\u2019 by the time their trials conclude. The few that the justice board thinks require institutionalisation are sent to the single \u2018special home\u2019 in North Delhi. This home also contains a wing, known as the \u2018place of safety\u2019, for juveniles who were erroneously sent to adult prisons, but cannot now be kept with other juveniles for fear that their brutalising (prison) experiences might rub off on the others.
\nIt\u2019s a regular day at the Sewa Kutir court. Outside sit gaggles of anxious kids and parents. Policemen, who are required to be in plainclothes, wait to present evidence or escort children into the courtroom. Private lawyers, who have set up shop in the courtyard, wait behind desks for the next customer. Three young boys, all about 17 years old, squat nervously in front of the room that houses the Delhi State Legal Services Authority, which provides free legal aid to children who cannot afford a private lawyer. They\u2019re facing an \u2018attempt to murder\u2019 charge over a brawl that started with a minor motorcycle accident in their colony.
\nThey spent two months at the Sewa Kutir observation home, after which they were released on bail. That was four months ago. There have been \u201cfive or six\u201d hearings since then. Why is their case taking so long? \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d says one, \u201cwe just want to be back in school; we\u2019ll never make such a mistake again.\u201d What does the judge have to say? \u201cShe doesn\u2019t talk to us. Our lawyer does all the talking.\u201d
\nInside the \u2018courtroom\u2019, in clear violation of the recommendations of the Juvenile Justice Act that says that \u201cthe Board shall not sit on a raised platform and the sitting arrangement shall be uniform\u201d, the judges sit perched on a forbidding platform surrounded by a small army of stenographers and orderlies. The juveniles, their parents and witnesses have to stand \u2014 no effort is made to put them at ease.
\nJuveniles are also afterthoughts in the observation home. The only doctor at a complex responsible for a large number of children between the ages of 12 and 18 was suspended recently and has not been replaced. Efforts at rehabilitation are in the form of casual classes and vocational training. These do engage the children, but \u201cwhat they really need is someone to talk to, someone to motivate them,\u201d says Raj Sharma, a former juvenile offender, who, after having served time at the special home, spent a year teaching children to paint at the Delhi government\u2019s Alipur shelter. \u201cFifteen minutes every couple of days with a child is just not enough.\u201d This is the time when the children need support, and some of them are willing to talk, says Sharma. \u201cThey know that they won\u2019t get support once they\u2019re out.\u201d
\nTo compound matters, even probationary services, which on paper form the backbone of the juvenile justice system, are largely absent. More than 90 percent of the children who come before the court are released on \u2018bail\u2019 at the conclusion of their trials. They\u2019re expected to report to the court regularly, and probation officers of the Delhi government are supposed to keep track of them.
\nBizarrely, there are seven officers in all of Delhi tasked with this responsibility. Their role, according to Bharti Ali, who works for Haq, an NGO concerned with child\u2019s rights issues, never goes beyond preparing a single report filed at the time of trial, detailing the social circumstances of the child. \u201cThey don\u2019t even get a transport allowance,\u201d she says, \u201cso they can hardly be expected to travel to distant corners of the city for follow-up visits.\u201d
\nIn effect, juveniles are sent back after an intervention that is at best minimal into the very circumstances that brought them into the system.
\nBack in Trilokpuri, the juvenile is evasive about his past. He\u2019s the only one of four siblings \u2014 three brothers and one sister \u2014 who has never been to school. Nor has he ever worked. After his father died 10 years ago, his life slid out of control. \u201cI did these,\u201d he says pointing to the scars on his arm, \u201cto myself at the time.\u201d
\nThere are also three long, deep cuts behind his neck, incurred, he says, \u201cduring a fight at home\u201d. He was first arrested for a fight that broke out when he was out distributing cards for a cousin\u2019s wedding. The second time around, he says, he \u201cdrank beer\u201d and was joyriding on a friend\u2019s motorcycle when they injured a man.
\nAfter a short stint at an observation home, the Juvenile Justice Board sent him back to Trilokpuri only for the pattern to repeat itself. This time, he and a group of friends got into another drunken fight. Whether anyone got injured, or knives or blades were used, he refuses to say.
\nThe police, suspecting that he was an adult, sent him to Delhi\u2019s notorious Tihar Jail. They ordered a bone ossification test, but he spent the two months that it took for the results to arrive in Tihar. The test put his age at \u201cbetween 16 and 18\u201d. After another few weeks at an observation home he was back in circulation.
\nBy now he\u2019d become notorious in the locality, and a fourth incident followed. Despite having had the bone ossification test, he was once again put in Tihar. \u201cI told the police I was a juvenile, but they didn\u2019t listen,\u201d he says. This time, he spent 18 days at the prison, before being transferred to an observation home. On both occasions, despite having spent time in Tihar, he was kept in observation homes where there was minimal segregation of children based either on their age or the nature of their offence.
\nThe only time a probation officer visited him was after his first arrest. \u201cHow can the Juvenile Justice Board send a child back into the same circumstances, often to parents who might actually encourage them to commit crimes?\u201d asks a visibly angry Suman Nalwa, head of Delhi Police\u2019s special unit for women and children.
\nBharti Ali also accuses the board of functioning in an \u201cad hoc\u201d manner. \u201cThey have too many cases, and are in a hurry to close them.\u201d This leads to sentences that are inadequate, she points out, citing a case in which a teenager accused of raping a seven-year-old girl was let off after three months in an observation home. Haq is challenging that verdict.
\nThe special home and \u2018place of safety\u2019 lies a few kilometres from Sewa Kutir. The structure, crammed into an area the size of a few basketball courts, was once a British armoury. It looks as impenetrable today as it must have been in its heyday. Its 30-foot walls, painted in a fading, rain-streaked yellow, are topped by barbed wire. Private security guards patrol a parapet behind the fence.
\nJuveniles who have been here say the dormitories are housed in two large undivided sheds with eight-feet thick walls. There\u2019s little light or ventilation; the only open recreational space is a volleyball court.
\nInside the administrative offices, in a smaller compound adjoining the home, a group of officers is taking a tea break. On a wall hangs a white board listing the number of inmates. There are only a few \u2014 there were 25 till a few days back, but some have been released. There are now four children in the special home and 11 in the \u2018place of safety\u2019.
\nThe most \u2018difficult\u2019 children \u2014 repeat offenders or those accused of crimes like rape and murder \u2014 are kept here. They\u2019re all in the 16-18 age group. The officers can\u2019t wait to spill their woes, but they want to stay anonymous since they\u2019re not authorised to speak to the media. \u201cThese kids are rough; it takes them less than a minute to crack a person\u2019s skull,\u201d says a welfare officer. \u201cEvery few days one of us is beaten up. The other day they smashed a cook against a wall.\u201d
\n\u201cBut there\u2019s little we can do about it,\u201d says a security official. \u201cThe Juvenile Justice Board doesn\u2019t allow us to punish them in any way. It takes their word over ours. If a few kids get together and complain about one of us, we are suspended without even a hearing.\u201d
\nTo substantiate what they\u2019re saying, one official points to a pile of what looks like construction debris \u2014 broken pipes, taps and metal rods \u2014 stacked in a corner of the superintendent\u2019s office. This, they claim, is the doing of the inmates. \u201cThey wreak havoc at the slightest provocation.\u201d
\nAnother opens out a roll of paper to reveal a dozen metal strips, the edges of which have been sharpened against stone to make them knife-sharp. \u201cThe kids made these using strips taken from an air cooler. We found them suspended from threads under a manhole cover.\u201d
\nSome of the \u2018inmates\u2019 held in the \u2018place of safety\u2019 have, according to the officials, spent as many as four years in adult prisons before it was discovered that they were juveniles when they committed their crimes. That experience has scarred and hardened them, and all of them are now over 18. \u201cWe\u2019re not equipped to handle these people,\u201d the official says.
\nHe claims that for the purpose of the law these inmates continue to be juveniles despite being adults. They can, as a consequence, assault the staff without any fear of punishment. The police is so wary of getting involved with juvenile crime, complain the officials, that they are reluctant to register a case even when a worker at the institution is beaten up.
\nAs for the younger children in the home bullied by older boys, the officers profess helplessness. \u201cThis structure is not meant to be a children\u2019s home. There is no way we can segregate the children from each other,\u201d admits one.
\n\u201cIn fact,\u201d he continues, \u201cthe only way we can contain a riot here is by locking all the children in.\u201d What they do to each other when that happens is anybody\u2019s guess.
\nThe few welfare officers are also expected to function as counsellors and psychologists. \u201cLeave alone a doctor, we don\u2019t even have a vehicle to take a child to one,\u201d says a senior official. They\u2019re expected to use public transportation. \u201cIf in that process one of them escapes, we\u2019re in trouble.\u201d
\nBharti Ali corroborates most of this. The counselling, recreational and educational services at the special home are provided entirely by the NGOs, she says, adding, \u201cAlmost nothing is institutionalised.\u201d While the officials at the special home are held accountable for the children held there, they complain that the Juvenile Justice Board treats them with contempt. The views of the welfare officers, who are closest to the children, are never taken into account, either when bail is being granted or when the custody of children is being extended.
\nThe juveniles have figured out how the system works. \u201cAll of them know how to use the laws to their advantage,\u201d says Raj Sharma, the former juvenile offender-turned-art teacher. In most cases, they have realised that they will be let off on bail in a few months; for more severe crimes they will spend perhaps a year in a special home, where little by way of either punishment or reform will happen.
\nOrganised gangs are taking advantage of this by recruiting children to steal and to sell drugs. Their operations are so streamlined that when these children are caught \u201cthere\u2019s a lawyer already waiting for them at the justice board when they arrive,\u201d says Anant Kumar Asthana, a child rights activist and lawyer.
\nOne 14-year-old boy now at the Sewa Kutir complex was an easy target for just such a gang. His father was an alcoholic who used to beat his mother regularly. \u201cShe left us,\u201d he says, \u201cand has never even come to see me since.\u201d
\nIn 2010, in class IV, he dropped out of school after having been accused by a teacher of stealing a mobile phone. \u201cI was angry, very angry,\u201d he says, \u201cI went to school and broke all the taps in the bathroom.\u201d A group of 18 to 22-year-olds who lived in same slum befriended him. \u201cThe first time I met them they gave me a little alcohol, it felt good.\u201d
\nSoon he was spending most of his time with them. From alcohol he had moved onto \u2018flute\u2019, or whitener fluids, and then to ganja. Once addiction had set in, the leaders of his gang started encouraging him to commit petty robberies, in return for which they would give him a little money and drugs. \u201cI once gave them eight silver and gold chains that I had snatched and they gave me some drugs and Rs 100 to spend on myself.\u201d
\nHe started breaking into houses in Anand Vihar and Preet Vihar in East Delhi, from which he would steal taps and other fittings that, in all likelihood, owners would not bother to lodge police complaints about. He would sell these to scrap dealers for Rs 280 a kilo.
\n\u201cOn the day my father died I was out stealing,\u201d he says, tears gathering in the corner of his eyes. \u201cI was so gone that I even stole the taps from the dispensary where my uncle had organised a memorial meeting for him.\u201d
\nHe would usually steal alone, but one day \u201cafter having smack\u201d he and a friend got greedy. \u201cWe decided to show everyone how much we could steal,\u201d he says. The police foiled that plan.
\nHe was released after three months, cured of his addiction. Four days later, he was back with the gang. Now he is scared of leaving the observation home. \u201cStrange thoughts come into my mind. At times, I want to kill my mother,\u201d he says, \u201cI know I\u2019ll end up returning to them (the gang) if I leave.\u201d
\nDelhi Police\u2019s Suman Nalwa blames the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act for this. The rules require that children who are caught for crimes that, in the case of adults, entail a sentence of less than seven years be released from the police station, while the details of their cases are passed onto the Juvenile Justice Board. All theft irrespective of its scale, including stealing automobiles, comes under this category. In these cases, evidence must be presented to the board within three months, otherwise the case is closed. \u201cThe most we can do is beat these juveniles a bit and then let them off,\u201d confesses a Juvenile Welfare Officer (JWO) posted in South Delhi.
\n\u201cThe children from these gangs just disappear,\u201d says Nalwa, \u201conly to appear after three months when the cases against them have been closed. This is very convenient for me, since it reduces my crimes statistics, but it\u2019s completely ridiculous.\u201d
\nThe Juvenile Justice Board in Delhi does not allow the police to maintain data on juvenile crime that is not \u2018heinous\u2019. So, says Nalwa, \u201cwe have little to go on, we don\u2019t even know what the extent of the disease is.\u201d
\nJust how extensively the system can be misused and manipulated is evident from the bleakly comic story of a boy who now works as a driver in North Delhi.
\nHe says he was introduced to drugs like ganja and eraser fluids when he was 10, at his government school in Delhi. Over the years the habit became worse, the drugs became harder, he dropped out of school, and started working at a mechanic\u2019s workshop. He was first arrested in 2010 for stabbing someone. \u201cI kept very bad company,\u201d he says with a disarming honesty, \u201cbut they had prepared me for such an eventuality.\u201d
\nHe was, at this time, 19 years old, but told the police he was 17. A \u2018bone age\u2019 test was ordered. \u201cMy parents bribed the investigating officer, who, in turn, got the doctors to fiddle the report.\u201d
\n\u201cWhen investigating my age the police asked me if I\u2019d gone to school,\u201d he says. He told them he had left in the fifth grade, though he had actually left in the fourth.
\n\u201cThey went to my school,\u201d he chuckles, \u201cwhere they were told that I\u2019d studied there. They searched the fifth grade records, but couldn\u2019t find my name, so assumed that the record was lost.\u201d
\nHe spent a month and a half in the observation home. A little over a year later, he was arrested again for stealing money. His drug habit by now was much worse, and he was 20 years old. Miraculously, the same process repeated itself. Did the police not recognise him? \u201cNo, I was caught at a different police station.\u201d The police kept no data on juvenile crime and so there was no way of catching repeat offenders or crosschecking their ages.
\nHis deception went unnoticed by the Juvenile Justice Board, and would have gone undetected entirely had he not had a change of heart at the drug detox centre. \u201cI had reached a point where I could no longer lie,\u201d he says, \u201cone day I told a magistrate the truth.\u201d
\nHis case has now been transferred to a regular court which, in acknowledgement of the initiative he has taken to reform himself, has let him out on bail. \u201cIt\u2019s my de-addiction anniversary tomorrow,\u201d he says sheepishly.
\nDelhi Police has just started keeping records of the age of the juveniles it arrests, but as of now there is no centralised database that would allow this information to be shared.
\n\u201cNo other country follows a system that prevents the police from keeping a person\u2019s criminal record,\u201d says Nalwa. \u201cShould a boy who has been arrested for murder at the age of 17 be employed as a security guard at 19? Can someone who has molested a child be driving a school van?\u201d
\nShe feels that children have started believing that crime actually pays. That, in a city like Delhi with deep economic disparities, is a very dangerous thing. The distrust between the Juvenile Justice Board and the police has reached a point where the latter is simply no longer willing to cooperate. \u201cThey treat us like adversaries, but when it\u2019s convenient, ask us to investigate cases. Why should we?\u201d Nalwa says.
\nAs a consequence, the police\u2019s attempts at dealing with juvenile crime have been half-hearted. In mid-2012, NGO Pratidhi filed an RTI request asking the police for details on the number of cases that had been handled by Special Juvenile Police Units in Delhi\u2019s districts.
\nIn response, West District said they kept no records. The Central District said, \u201cNo such case was reported during the last one year.\u201d The South District said that though it dealt with 49 cases of juvenile crime and 191 cases of children in need of protection, not one of them was handled by these specialised units. The district had only gotten around to hiring a social worker for this unit in May 2012.
\nThe judiciary also, not surprisingly, finds itself isolated, and somewhat powerless. Anant Kumar Asthana heads a committee appointed by the Delhi High Court to oversee the running of institutions for juveniles in conflict with the law. He says he is going to file a case in the court compiling all the orders which have been issued on the directions of the committee that he heads, but have not been followed by the police or the Delhi government. He says, melodramatically, that he has been a complete \u201cfailure\u201d at his job. If the children seem secondary while they are in the system, they are abandoned completely when they exit. There are no aftercare plans, or support.
\nOutside the juvenile board at Delhi Gate, a harried middle-aged woman runs after a police bus, talking to her son who is in it. She\u2019s happy that he\u2019s going to be released tomorrow. But this lady is also petrified. \u201cThis is the fourth time he\u2019s been imprisoned. I wish someone would tell me what to do with him,\u201d she pleads, as the bus turns and disappears.
\nTomorrow she will take him back to Trilokpuri, and hope that he commits no more crimes.
\nakshai@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juvenile justice in Delhi is a failure. A system that is a study in neglect and buck-passing has reduced those trapped within it to a mix of despair, anger and apathy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":117181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[9190,9159,9191,7528,517,8230,9192,6716,7594],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}