LAW5407 Juvenile Delinquency — Unit 1: Juvenile Delinquency

Unit 1: Juvenile Delinquency

1.1 Meaning and Definition of Juvenile

A juvenile = a person below the age of majority in criminal matters — in Nepal’s child-law (and the CRC’s Article 1), a child is every human being below eighteen years unless majority is attained earlier under the applicable law; the Children’s Act 2075 and the Criminal Code 2074’s juvenile faces both work with the under-eighteen boundary (with the liability-ladder inside it — Unit 5). The law’s separate naming matters: the juvenile is not a small adult but a developing person — the legal category itself encodes the doctrine of diminished culpability and greater malleability (Unit 4’s rationale).

1.2 Stages of Human Development

The developmental ladder (the exam’s map): infancy (0–2: attachment’s foundation); early childhood (2–6: the symbolic world, the first rules); middle childhood (6–11: school-age — concrete thinking, rule-morality, the peer’s arrival); adolescence (11–18: puberty’s transformation — abstract thought’s dawn, identity’s work, the peer’s primacy); emerging adulthood (18–25: the prefrontal completion — planning, restraint, consequence). The psychology’s anchors (names only): Piaget’s cognitive stages (concrete → formal operations), Kohlberg’s moral ladder (pre-conventional → conventional → post-conventional), Erikson’s identity stages, and the modern adolescent-brain science (the reward system running ahead of the control system into the mid-twenties).

1.3 Impact of Human Development on Mental State of Juvenile

Why development is criminal law’s business: (1) diminished responsibility — the immature prefrontal control means poorer impulse-regulation, higher risk-preference, and discounted futures (the science beneath the age-ladder of liability); (2) heightened suggestibility — the interrogation’s dangers (false confessions — the juvenile’s classic vulnerability; the safeguards of Unit 6’s child-friendly inquiry); (3) peer susceptibility — the adolescent’s audience-brain (risk-taking in company — the group-offence patterns); (4) identity’s plasticity — the stigmatising label can become the self (“I am a criminal” — labeling theory’s home terrain, Unit 2.3); and (5) the reform window — the same plasticity that risks also heals: the malleability that makes juveniles both more salvageable and more vulnerable — the juvenile justice system’s founding wager.

1.4 Concept of Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile delinquency = the antisocial or illegal conduct of the young — in the legal frame, the acts of a child that would be crimes if committed by an adult, plus the status offences (the age-only infractions: truancy, running away, curfew — conduct criminal only because of the doer’s age — the welfare-and-justice debate’s classic). The definitions’ two rivers: the legal (the statute’s age-and-conduct boundaries) and the sociological (the broader antisocial-behaviour stream — the delinquent as a developmental phase, not a type). The Nepali frame: the Children’s Act’s world — the child’s offence handled by the juvenile court/bench (Unit 5) — with the modern vocabulary’s shift (1.5).

1.5 Juvenile Delinquent vs Juvenile in Conflict with Law

The terminology’s evolution (the exam’s short-note banker): “juvenile delinquent” — the older, clinical-stigmatising label (the delinquent as a defective type); “juvenile in conflict with law” — the CRC-era reframing: the child is not a delinquent being but a person in a situation of conflict with the law — the conduct named, not the identity; the stigmatisation minimised (the Beijing Rules’ language discipline). Nepal’s statutes and the Court’s modern practice speak in the conflict-with-law frame — the shift from “what is wrong with this child” to “what has happened and what does this child need”. The exam’s line: same referent, different penology — the label is the policy.

1.6 Types of Juvenile Delinquency

1. By the conduct’s legal class: criminal-type (theft, violence, drugs) vs status offences (age-only).
2. By the actor’s pattern: occasional (the developmental phase — the age-crime curve’s teenage peak that fades) vs habitual/career (the early-onset, life-course-persistent minority — Moffitt’s typology, name only).
3. By companionship: individual vs group/gang (the adolescent’s natural unit — the group-risk dynamics).
4. By the victim’s face: property, person, public order, and the self-victimising (substance, self-harm).
5. The Nepali case-file’s staples: petty theft and burglary; street-children’s survival offending; substance involvement; group violence; trafficking’s coerced roles; and the conflict-era’s children-in-arms (the reintegration history).

1.7 Emerging Issues in Juvenile Delinquency

1. The digital delinquent — cyberbullying, hacking, sexting-and-image abuse, online radicalisation, gaming fraud (the ETA 2063’s offence face meeting the juvenile frame — the age-verification and anonymisation puzzles).
2. Substance and the young — the poly-drug entry ages’ fall; the treatment-vs-punishment question.
3. Street and working children — the survival-offence economy (the child-labour law’s boundary cases).
4. Child trafficking and exploitation — the coerced offender (the courier, the “wife” — the victim-offender overlap’s hardest cases).
5. Conflict-affected children — the ex-combatant children’s reintegration (the transitional-justice interface — Public International Law-II, Semester 4).
6. School violence and bullying — the institution’s own crime scene.
7. Age-determination disputes — the unregistered births (the age-proof problem — Unit 6’s forensic ossification era); the trafficking victims misaged as adults.
8. The juvenile records-and-futures — the criminal-record’s shadow over education, jobs, migration — the expungement question.
9. Mental health’s quiet crisis — the juvenile facilities’ care deficit (the therapeutic approach’s juvenile face).

Model Questions

1. Define juvenile and juvenile delinquency, distinguishing the legal from the sociological concept. (10)
2. How does human development explain the juvenile’s separate legal treatment? (15)
3. Distinguish a juvenile delinquent from a child in conflict with law. Why does the vocabulary matter? (10)
4. Classify juvenile delinquency and identify its emerging issues in Nepal. (15)
5. Short notes: (a) Status offence; (b) Age-crime curve; (c) Suggestibility and the false confession; (d) Adolescent-brain science. (4×5)

---

📚 Get the complete notes: Download the full Juvenile Delinquency PDF (all units) — Law Info Nepal Original Notes Series.