More than 55% of the cases before 362 Juvenile Justice Boards across the country were pending as October 31, 2023, according to a study conducted by the India Justice Report released on Thursday.

The study, titled “Juvenile Justice and Children in Conflict with the Law: A Study of Capacity at the Frontlines”, showed that 1,00,904 cases were filed against minors between November 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023.

Of this, the Juvenile Justice Boards had only disposed of 45,097.

The boards are constituted under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015. The Act states that state governments are required to constitute one or more Juvenile Justice Boards in each district for dealing with matters relating to children in conflict who have been accused of a crime.

The board must comprise a metropolitan magistrate or a judicial magistrate with at least three years’ experience and two social workers, of whom at least one shall be a woman.

The study on the juvenile justice system was conducted based on responses received from 250 Right to Information queries, in the absence of a central and public repository of information on the boards.

The India Justice Report study framed 16 questions on the capacity of the juvenile justice system to state police headquarters, the Department of Women and Child Development, State Child Protection Society and the State Legal Services Authority.

More than 500 responses were received from 28 states and two Union Territories, covering 530 districts.

“In a decade since the passing of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015, the IJR study finds that the decentralised architecture meant to deliver child-centric services suffers from systemic gaps, including a lack of inter-agency coordination and data-sharing,” the report stated.

It pointed out that 92% of the districts in India had constituted Juvenile Justice Boards. However, 24% of the boards were not fully constituted and 30% of the total did not have an attached legal services clinic, a requirement of the National Legal Services Authority.

According to the study, only Odisha, Sikkim, and Jammu and Kashmir had fully constituted boards.

A total of 30% of the 436 sanctioned posts for social workers in 218 Special Juvenile Police Units had also not been filled till October 31, 2023, said the study.

It added that 15 states reported only 28 medical officers in 128 institutions. They also only had 82 full-time superintendent in charge of the institutions.

The states are: Assam, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

Fourteen states and Union Territories – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura and West Bengal – did not have Places of Safety to hold children between the ages of 16 to 18 years who were accused of committing a heinous offence, according to the study.

The Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 allows those aged above 16 to be treated as adults if they have been accused of a heinous crime.

If the minors are tried as adults and convicted, they are be placed in an observation home till they are 21, and then shifted to a jail. They cannot be sentenced to death or life imprisonment without the possibility of release.

The study report stated that only Goa had reported an Observation Home, where a minor is sent during the pendency of an inquiry as a temporary measure, in both its districts. Rajasthan reported 40 in 42 districts, and Mizoram and Maharashtra reported more Observation Homes than districts.

Commenting on the findings, Justice Madan B Lokur, a former Judge of the Supreme Court and chairperson of the United Nations Internal Justice Council, said it was “worrying” that nearly a quarter of the boards were functioning without a full bench 10 years after the Act was passed.

“This has a detrimental effect on children who fall under its purview,” he said. “There should be a concerted effort to routinely collate and disseminate data specifically on Juvenile Justice. Inadequate and patchy data from RTIs is concerning.”

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