Juvenile Crimes on the Rise in Assam

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: Juvenile crime is on the rise in Assam, and what is worrisome is that no direct investigation has been done as yet by the State Social Welfare Department on the issue. Such a situation came to light on Friday when State Social Welfare Minister Pramila Rani Brahma was replying to an unstarred question on the floor of the State Assembly.

According to the minister, the number of juvenile crimes has been 1,220 in 2016-17, 1,071 in 2017-18 and 1,537 in 2018-19. The crimes include theft, killing, abduction, rape, and looting. Admitting that there has been no direct investigation regarding the reasons behind such a rise in juvenile crimes, the minister cited some reasons like lack of education, social and economic weakness, lack of peace in the family, misuse of technology, superstitions, lack of importance on youth mindset, etc behind such a situation.

Juvenile delinquency, or offending, is often separated into three categories:

According to the developmental research of Moffitt (2006), there are two different types of offenders that emerge in adolescence. One is the repeat offender, referred to as the life-course-persistent offender, who begins offending or showing antisocial/aggressive behavior in adolescence (or even in childhood) and continues into adulthood; and the age-specific offender, referred to as the adolescence-limited offender, for whom juvenile offending or delinquency begins and ends during their period of adolescence. Considering that most teenagers tend to show some form of antisocial or delinquent behavior during adolescence, it is important to account for these behaviors in childhood in order to determine whether they will be life-course-persistent offenders or adolescence-limited offenders. Although adolescence-limited offenders tend to drop all criminal activity once they enter adulthood and show less pathology than life-course-persistent offenders, they still show more mental health, substance abuse, and financial problems, both in adolescence and adulthood, than those who were never delinquent.

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