Ancient Indian jurisprudence believed no child is beyond redemption

The British miniseries Adolescence opens with a jarring scene: armed police officers raid the home (and room) of 13-year-old Jamie Miller in West Yorkshire and arrest him for the fatal stabbing of a classmate. It’s a moment designed to evoke unease, blurring the lines between how the law treats adults and minors during arrest.

But what unfolds after this initial act is far more telling — and far more important.

The rest of the series offers a disarmingly precise portrait of how the United Kingdom’s juvenile justice system engages with a child accused of serious violence: a parent is present throughout, legal aid is appointed without delay, and a trained psychologist becomes part of the process from the very beginning.

The story’s focus is not on proving innocence or guilt, but on how justice, in its most technical and humane sense, must adapt when the accused is a child. Adolescence does not trivialise the gravity of the offence. What it does, instead, is offer a glimpse into a system that chooses not to collapse childhood into criminality. This is not sentimentalism; it is structural compassion. The process is firm, but it is not brutal. The child is treated not as an exception to the system but as someone for whom the system itself must recalibrate.

What’s an appropriate age?

Across the world, legal systems have struggled with this recalibration. How should a society respond when a child commits a serious crime? What is the appropriate balance between protection and accountability? Should the child’s developmental immaturity mitigate punishment, or should the gravity of the act override age? These are not questions with universal answers. They reflect not only legal philosophies but social and scientific understandings of childhood, culpability, and reform.

In England and Wales, the age of criminal responsibility is one of the lowest in Europe: 10 years. While this has attracted criticism from child rights groups, the system is nonetheless structured with safeguards once a child enters it. Youth courts are separate from adult courts; sentencing emphasises supervision and education, rather than incarceration. The Crown Prosecution Service is governed by strict protocols on charging minors. Importantly, children have anonymity protections, and efforts are made to divert them away from formal trials where possible. In 2023, the UK launched its first secure school, Oasis Restore, a hybrid between a custodial setting and a residential school with a therapeutic and educational focus.

Norway, on the other hand, has one of the most progressive juvenile justice systems globally. The minimum age of criminal responsibility is 15, among the highest in Europe. Offences committed by children are handled entirely by the child welfare system. Even for those over 15, the system focuses on restorative processes: family counselling, educational support, and structured reintegration. Incarceration is rare and usually a measure of last resort.

In the United States….

The United States has seen a sharp evolution in juvenile justice, moving from a punitive model towards greater reform. Historically, many states allowed juveniles to be tried and sentenced as adults, including life imprisonment without parole. Today, more than 27 states and Washington DC have banned life without parole for juveniles.

Neuroscience research has played a pivotal role in shaping reforms. The US Supreme Court in Roper v Simmons (2005), Graham v Florida (2010), and Miller v Alabama (2012) cited developmental immaturity, peer pressure, and diminished capacity for judgement as grounds to invalidate capital punishment and mandatory life sentences for juveniles. Still, states vary: some set the minimum age of criminal responsibility as low as six or seven.

These policy choices are increasingly underpinned by neuroscience. Research from Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Mental Health confirms that the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain involved in planning, decision-making, and impulse control — is not fully developed until the early to mid-20s. This makes adolescents more susceptible to peer influence, more impulsive, and less capable of long-term judgement — factors that have legal and moral implications when assigning blame and deciding punishment.

In India….

India’s Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 was a landmark legislation in many respects. But the amendment allowing juveniles aged 16 to 18 to be tried as adults in ‘heinous offences’ marked a sharp turn. This was introduced in the wake of the 2012 Delhi gang rape case, where one of the accused was a few months shy of 18. The decision was made more to appease public sentiment than in response to scientific evidence or criminological data. The Justice J S Verma Committee explicitly advised against lowering the age of criminal majority.

Since then, concerns have mounted. Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) lack forensic psychologists and trained child welfare personnel. In many states, the JJBs function like extended magistrate courts, with minimal sensitivity to the developmental considerations the law demands. Children continue to be detained in police lockups or adult prisons in violation of statutory protections. Confidentiality is regularly breached by the media and the police. Homes for rehabilitation are underfunded and understaffed, as evidenced in multiple CAG reports.

A chance for course correction

All our traditional penal legislation have been structured to toe the colonial administrative purpose of control and command than any reformation of the ‘criminal’. With the introduction of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, there is a narrow but real window to correct course. This is the moment to draft a separate, cohesive legal code for juvenile justice — a Bharatiya Kishora Nyaya Sanhita — that embodies Indian constitutional values, reflects scientific advances, and draws from Indian thought traditions that define not only the process and procedure but also the ethos of response to wrongdoing.

Age-old wisdom

Ancient Indian jurisprudence was deeply sensitive to age and intent. The Arthashastra (Book IV, Chapter 8) distinguishes punishment by age and recommends correction, not penalty, for those below maturity: “A person under the age of maturity who commits an offence shall be corrected, not punished.” Similarly, the Manusmriti (Chapter VIII, verses 285-286) holds that minors are not fit for the same consequences as adults, and places responsibility on guardians. Even in the Yājñavalkya Smṛti, offences committed by minors are treated with remedial, not retributive, orientation. These insights, dating back over two millennia, demonstrate an intuitive understanding of diminished culpability that aligns strikingly with modern developmental science.

The aim today should be to replace discretionary mercy with institutionalised care; to shift from suspicion to safeguarding. We must invest in child-sensitive courts, expand restorative justice models, and embed psychological evaluations as routine and rigorous. The Bharatiya Kishora Nyaya Sanhita can act as a comprehensive and unambiguous legal code that defines and lays down protocols on how mistakes done by minors should be handled — with empathy, structure, and scientific rigour.

Adolescence reminds us, without preachiness, that how a society treats its children at their worst moments defines its moral centre. A child in conflict with the law is not merely a legal subject; they are also a reflection of what the law is willing to believe about change, growth, and redemption. Time is running out, and if we do not act fast, these kids will soon be adults, and they will have missed the bus for good.

It is, ultimately, a testament to whether we are willing — as a society governed by law and conscience — to pursue that one sheep that has strayed, not with condemnation but with conviction that it, too, deserves a path back to the fold. A just and compassionate juvenile justice system is not measured by how harshly it punishes, but by how sincerely it believes that no child is beyond redemption. After all, there is no adult who hasn’t faltered or committed mistakes as a child—it is the response from the ecosystem that shaped their destiny.

(Prasanth Nair is a civil servant and author. X: @PrasanthIAS.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.