Ten years of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015

Every legal system must decide how to treat a child who breaks the law, and how to protect a child who needs care. In India both questions are answered by one statute, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. Its title reflects the two groups it serves: children in conflict with law, and children in need of care and protection.

In October 2026 the Juvenile Justice Committee of the Supreme Court of India, working with UNICEF, held a two-day national consultation on ten years of the Act, on 10 and 11 October, at the Supreme Court in New Delhi. The Chief Justice of India was to inaugurate it, and a compendium of landmark Supreme Court and High Court judgments on the Act, from 2015 to September 2026, was to be released.

The agenda shows where the hard questions lie. One is the treatment of children in conflict with law, and in particular the 'preliminary assessment' that Juvenile Justice Boards carry out when a child is alleged to have committed a heinous offence — an assessment that bears on how the child's case is then handled. Others concern vulnerable children who need care and protection, the working of adoption, children living in institutions, and their rehabilitation.

Because the Act is carried out on the ground by State governments and local bodies, the consultation gave time to the experience of individual States and Union Territories, with representatives of several of them scheduled to speak. The stated aims were to review what has been achieved, identify difficulties in implementation, share good practices and set priorities for the next ten years.

The wider purpose, as the Court put it, is a system in which every child receives care, protection, dignity and access to justice. The consultation's emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration reflects the idea that a child who has offended is still a child, and that the law's task is to restore as well as to respond.