The latest findings from the India Justice Report (IJR) reveal a shocking truth about India’s juvenile justice system: More than 50,000 children in conflict with the law are still awaiting justice, as of October 31, 2023. With 55% of cases pending before 362 Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) across the country, the gap between policy and practice has never been starker. For children caught in the system, this delay represents not just bureaucratic inefficiency, but a failure of justice itself.
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act (JJ Act), designed to safeguard the rights of children in conflict with the law, was hailed as a progressive step forward when it was enacted a decade ago. However, the IJR’s report paints a bleak picture of systemic failure, highlighting critical gaps in infrastructure, staffing, and data transparency that have left vulnerable children in limbo. What went wrong? And more importantly, what can be done to fix it?
The pendency crisis: Justice denied to thousands
The numbers are deeply concerning. Of the 100,904 cases filed before JJBs, fewer than half have been resolved. The pendency rate varies dramatically across the country—from an appalling 83% in Odisha to a relatively lower 35% in Karnataka. But regardless of the state, the truth is the same: justice is not being delivered, and children are suffering as a result.
One in four Juvenile Justice Boards across the country are operating without a full bench. This means that critical decisions about the lives of children—often involving their rehabilitation or incarceration—are being made by incomplete boards. How can a system that cannot even meet its most basic requirements be trusted to protect the rights of the most vulnerable?
This isn’t just a matter of delayed proceedings. For children caught in this paralysis, every passing day without resolution is another day of uncertainty and trauma. When children are left to languish in the system, it strips them of their childhood, their dignity, and their future.
Infrastructure and staffing: A system under strain
One of the most glaring issues identified by the IJR is the chronic understaffing and under-resourcing of juvenile justice institutions. Across the country, 30% of Juvenile Justice Boards lack an attached Legal Services Clinic, leaving children without proper legal aid. In an already overstretched system, the absence of trained personnel exacerbates the problem, leading to a crushing backlog of cases and contributing to the deep inequities between states.
Vacancies in key roles are another systemic flaw. Nearly 30% of social worker positions in Special Juvenile Police Units (SJPUs) remain unfilled, and in several states, child care institutions (CCIs) are operating with minimal staff. As of 2023, there were only 40 CCIs for girls across 292 districts, far from the minimum required to meet the needs of the children they serve. These institutions, many of which are meant to provide care and rehabilitation, are poorly inspected, underfunded, and often lack basic medical and psychological support.
Even more concerning is the state of medical care for children in these homes. Across 128 CCIs, only 28 medical officers are available, with nearly 80% of institutions reporting no doctors at all. How can children in crisis, many of whom are suffering from trauma, be expected to heal in such conditions?
The data disconnect: A nation in the dark
One of the most troubling findings from the IJR study is the lack of data transparency within the juvenile justice system. Unlike the National Judicial Data Grid, which tracks the progress of cases in courts, there is no central, publicly accessible database for JJBs. The absence of reliable data means that even the most basic questions about the functioning of the system cannot be answered without filing RTI requests. The IJR submitted more than 250 RTIs to obtain information, and only a fraction of states responded with comprehensive data.
This data vacuum makes it nearly impossible to assess the effectiveness of juvenile justice institutions at the national or state level. If authorities do not routinely collect and share data, how can we expect them to monitor the system’s effectiveness? How can we hold them accountable for their failures?
A decade of failure: Why has the system not delivered?
The Juvenile Justice Act was meant to be a landmark reform, focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and on ensuring that children in conflict with the law were treated with dignity and care. Yet, despite a decade of implementation, we are left with a system that is, in many cases, failing to meet the basic needs of children.
The IJR’s findings suggest that the decentralised structure of the juvenile justice system, which was intended to provide more localised and accessible services, has instead created coordination failures between agencies, compounded by a lack of funding and inadequate monitoring.
The report also points to serious concerns about governance. While the state and central governments have made some investments in the juvenile justice system, budget allocations remain woefully inadequate. The Mission Vatsalya scheme, which seeks to strengthen child protection services, received only 0.03% of the total 2025 Union Budget.
This allocation is not only insufficient but also indicative of the low priority the government places on addressing the needs of children in conflict with the law.
A call to action: Can the system be fixed?
The question that looms large now is: Can the system be fixed? The answer is yes, but it requires an urgent and comprehensive overhaul. The IJR report offers several recommendations, including:
• Filling vacancies in Juvenile Justice Boards and child care institutions with trained professionals.
• Establishing a centralised public database for juvenile justice cases to improve transparency and accountability.
• Training police officers, social workers, and probation officers to ensure they are equipped to handle the complex needs of children in conflict with the law.
• Regular independent evaluations of child care institutions and juvenile justice systems to ensure that children are receiving the care they need.
But perhaps most importantly, the government must commit to treating juvenile justice as a child protection issue, not merely a legal or bureaucratic one. This will require a paradigm shift in how the system is structured, funded, and monitored.
Conclusion: The children we fail to protect
The IJR’s findings lay bare the stark reality that the juvenile justice system is not working—and its failures are costing us dearly. More than 50,000 children are still waiting for justice. Their lives are on hold as they endure a system that is broken, underfunded, and under-resourced. It is a moral failure, a legal failure, and ultimately, a failure of our collective conscience.
As a nation, we must ask ourselves: are we willing to allow this system to continue failing these children? Or will we take the necessary steps to fix it and ensure that every child in conflict with the law is given a fair chance to be heard, rehabilitated, and reintegrated into society? The answer to that question will determine whether we truly care about the future of our children—or simply the future of our institutions.
Voices
Maja Daruwala, Chief Editor, India Justice Report, said, “The specially designed juvenile justice system is pyramidal in structure. Its optimal functioning relies on information flowing regularly from first responders at individual institutions like police stations and care institutions upwards into overseeing authorities at the district, state, and national level.
Dr Maja Daruwala
Yet, the IJR’s efforts at accessing reliable data from across-the-board evidence that authorised oversight bodies neither receive it routinely nor insist on it. Scattered and irregular data makes supervision episodic and accountability hollow.”
Justice Madan B. Lokur, former Judge, Supreme Court of India, commented, “IJR’s study exposes the gaps in our juvenile justice system. Despite the passage of 10 years since the implementation of the JJ Act, 2015, it is worrying to find that a quarter of JJBs did not have a full bench and evidence of a substantial number of staff vacancies in child care institutions.
This has a detrimental effect on children who fall under its purview. During my tenure in the Supreme Court and even thereafter, my endeavour was to encourage discourse on the rights of children and justice for children, whether they were in conflict with the law or in need of care and protection; to improve their living conditions and make justice delivery humane and compassionate with reintegration and rehabilitation as the ultimate goal.
There should be a concerted effort to routinely collate and disseminate data specifically on juvenile justice. Inadequate and patchy data from RTIs is concerning.
It is essential that a child-centric National Data Grid integrates information on the functioning of the juvenile justice system and that all authorities involved regularly publish standardised data about their functioning in relation to children. Until the information spine is built and used, the system cannot truly serve the best interests of the child.”