The main legal principle established is the emphasis on reformation, correction, and rehabilitation in the treatment of juvenile offenders, and the need to consider the age and circumstances of the offender in determining the appropriate punishment.

1. In these petitions the question that arises for consideration is important not only in respect of these cases but also from a long range point of view. What should be the court's approach in the case of juvenile delinquency and in what manner the juvenile offenders be treated.

2. Civilised nations have gone far from the days when it was considered that the correction for any maladjustment in society is by recourse to satisfaction of society's thirst for vengeance. Bentham said:

"The pleasure of vengeance calls to my mind sermon's riddle. It is sweet coming out of terrible, it is the honey dropping from the lion's mouth."

Gradually deterrence displaced retribution. Punishment was for the purpose of preventing the criminal from committing further as well as for deterring other members of the society from committing the same crime by showing what would be in store for them. Then there was the expiatory theory by which the guilty was to go through penance for purging him of his guilt. Now the emphasis is on reformation as it is thought that in most cases, a criminal is a victim of circumstances and situations.

3. The method of reformation-correction and rehabilitation is of vital importance in the case of the young offender. He being at a formative stage of development, prospects of redemption are greater and it is the court's duty to take note of that in the matter of imposition of punishment on him. Special provisions are made for children in all civilised systems of law. The environment, broken home, desertion and quarrel of parents, unemployment of parents and total lack of facilities for the children to come up, all might lead to the unfortunate state of affairs when the adolescent takes to crime. Insecure or neglected children left to themselves deprived of parental care always run risk of falling into anti social conduct. It is indeed happy to note that these questions centering round the correctional and rehabilitative techniques especially in regard to the youth offender are now being discussed at length by the law teachers. (Note the article on Special Correctional and Rehabilitative Techniques in India-Problems and Perspectives in the Cochin University Law Review).

4. One of us in disposing of Crl. R. P. No. 69 of 1982 (the Acting Chief Justice) had said:

"The very purpose of detention which the petitioner had undergone is the reformation of his character in order to enable him to join the mainstream of society on his release. If that be the objective that would be defeated by any sentence which the petitioner may have to undergo with hardened criminals in the regular jails of the State. But that by itself may not be a criterion for us to revise the sentence imposed on petitioner in C. C. No. 228 of 1977. We notice that when the Magistrate convicted the petitioner in the case and sentenced him to imprisonment in 1977 and when the Sessions Judge confirmed it in 1978 the petitioner was far below 23 years of age and as an adolescent it would have been appropriate for the Magistrate to direct detention in the Borstal School as was done in the other cases. No advertence was made to the age of the accused or the need for considering the detention in the Borstal School either by the Magistrate or by the Sessions Judge. Had that been made there would have been no sentence of imprisonment and there would have been only an order of detention in the Borstal School. We therefore feel that in this case it is appropriate that while upholding the conviction the sentence has to be limited to what has already been undergone and therefore the petitioner will have to suffer no further terms of imprisonment."

5. Sending a juvenile to jail without looking into all these aspects, it is likely that he becomes a hardened criminal and this will be totally against the present policy of penology which is to reform the criminals than to punish them as pointed out by Fazal Ali, J. in Sitaram v. State of Maharashtra (A.I.R 1979 S C. 1569 at