Unfolding Stories of Children in Conflict with Law: Contextual Dynamics, Stigma and Its Impact on Schooling

Abstract

Recent scholarship explains various causes of children in conflict with the law (CCL) by the discipline of criminology across the globe. However, despite this discourse, it has been unable to adequately address the intricate relationship between the local context and how children are accused before they become embroiled with the Juvenile Justice System (JJS) in India. This article explores such contextual dynamics surrounding children’s everyday relationships in different spaces they primarily associate with, which play a role in pushing them into entanglement with the legal system. The framework of child rights is used, which emphasises the voices of children, in an attempt to lay bare the nuanced contexts that lead to conflict with the law. I seek to foreground this argument through fieldwork conducted within an observation home (OH) during 2021–2022. Methodologically, this study adheres to situated ethics, ensuring ethical engagement with participants found through the purposive sampling method. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted with both school dropouts and school-going children who turned CCL, admitted to an OH, including three of their parents. The findings of the study indicate that children are conveniently accused, negatively framed and humiliated locally within the space of community, school and peer relations, including different disputes between families/communities, which potentially push them towards the JJS that impact schooling.