JJ Act 2015 § 15
Definition
Provision of India's Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 requiring a preliminary forensic-psychological assessment of 16-17 year olds accused of heinous offences before a transfer decision to the Children's Court can be made.
- Statute
- Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015
- Section
- 15
- Jurisdiction
- India
- Applies to
- Accused aged 16 to 17 in heinous offences
- Requires
- Preliminary forensic-psychological assessment
Common questions
What happens after the Section 15 assessment is completed?+
The Juvenile Justice Board uses the findings to decide whether the case is transferred to the Children's Court for trial as an adult, or retained within the juvenile justice system.
What does the assessment typically examine?+
It generally covers the child's mental and physical capacity to have committed the offence, their ability to understand its consequences, and the circumstances alleged to surround it.
Related terms
- Doli Incapax
- Common-law rebuttable presumption that children aged 10-13 are incapable of criminal intent unless the prosecution proves they knew the act was seriously...
- Dual-Systems Model (Steinberg 2008)
- Developmental theory proposing that adolescent risk-taking results from an imbalance between an early-maturing socioemotional brain system and a later-maturing cognitive-control system, producing...
- Kent Factors
- Eight criteria articulated in Kent v. United States (1966) for evaluating whether a juvenile should be transferred to adult court, including seriousness...
- MAYSI-2
- Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Second Version; a brief mental-health screening tool for young people in juvenile justice settings, widely used in US detention...
- Miller V. Alabama (2012)
- US Supreme Court ruling prohibiting mandatory life-without-parole sentences for offenders who were under 18 at the time of their offence, on the...
- Montgomery V. Louisiana (2016)
- US Supreme Court ruling applying Miller v. Alabama retroactively to prisoners already serving mandatory life-without-parole sentences imposed for crimes committed as juveniles.
- SAVRY (Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth)
- 24-item structured professional judgement instrument for assessing violence risk in young people aged 12-18, with the strongest multi-jurisdictional validation record of any...