Strengths

The adjudicating authority has been changed from a Magistrate (to be assisted by two social workers) to a Bench of two social workers and a Magistrate, redesignated as the Juvenile Justice Board. This change in composition of the adjudicating authority is one of the more significant changes in the new law. Now, space has been created for bringing about a change in the very nature of the inquiry. The

primary inquiry of whether the child did commit the offence as mandated by a magistrate's training can now be displaced by a social worker's inquiry, which could focus on why the child committed the offence, and how one may redress the situation.

What could change has been referred to as the criminal law mindset itself. This is in effect an important step towards decriminalizing the administration of juvenile justice, provided the rules (which are framed by the individual states) operationalize the same.