期刊名称：Zeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik
印刷版ISSN：1863-6470
出版年度：2011
卷号：2011
期号：06
出版社：Editors of ZIS
摘要：Comparing the juvenile justice systems of two countries
which do not share a common cultural background is a difficult
and demanding enterprise. A comparison of two legal
systems in general and of juvenile justice in particular, however,
is at the same time a challenge and an opportunity for
research. It is obvious that some social problems are very
similar all over the world, irrespective of the particular cultural
context, deviant behaviour being one of them. In a situation
like this, it is of major interest to see in which way a
given society reacts to these problems and what consequences
follow. From an academic point of view the situation
can be compared to a large-scale sociological field experiment,
because the similarity of the problems allows us to
study the outcomes of the specific forms of intervention and
their assessment in the respective cultural context. A comparison
of the juvenile justice systems of two countries as
culturally different as India and Germany thus offers the
chance to gain a better insight into the mechanisms of social
control and the way deviant and illegal behaviour can be
responded to by society.
To observe that India and Germany are two very different
countries comes near to a platitude. India, an independent
nation since 1947, is the second-most populous country of the
world with over 1.1 billion people, its share of the world
population amounting to more than 17 %. About 30 % of the
Indian population is in the age group 0 to 14 years, around 5
% older than 65 years. Until today, life in India has been
shaped by its rich cultural traditions including a strong religious
influence, about 80 % of the population being Hindus.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the share of the urban
population is 29 %, the literacy rate 71 %, and life expectancy
at birth 66 years. Due to its colonial past India belongs
to the common law system. Germany, on the other hand, is
one of the biggest and richest countries of the European Union,
but has a mere population of 82 million, which is slightly
more than 1 % of the world population. Germany´s demographic
structure is considerably different from India´s: Only
about 13 % of its people belong to the age group 0 to 14,
whereas 20 % are 65 years or older. By religion, Germany is
a Christian country, about 1/3 of the population being protestant,
1/3 Roman Catholic and 1/3 unaffiliated or other. The
share of the urban population is 74 %, the literacy rate 99 %,
and life expectancy at birth 79 years. Germany´s legal tradition
is clearly shaped by the civil law system.
It might be deduced from these figures that juvenile delinquency
and juvenile justice play a major role in India
whereas the low percentage of young people and the high
literacy rate in Germany might be indicators that these topics
are of minor importance only in Europe. However, the opposite
is true. Germany like most Western states has a relatively
high amount of juvenile delinquency registered by the police,
illegal behaviour of young people being considered a major
social problem which must be responded to by the state in a
determined way. India, on the other hand, with its different
sociodemographic structure (median age in India 25.9 years,
in contrast to 44.3 years in Germany) has a relatively low
level of juvenile delinquency, young people not playing a
major role in the criminal justice statistics. In the following,
we would like to contribute some observations on the obvious
disparities and similarities between the legal concepts
which have been enacted to respond to young persons´ illegal
behaviour in both states. The objective of the article is a
comparison of the two juvenile justice systems in their respective
historical and cultural contexts. The comparison,
however, can be a snap-shot of the present day situation only,
since India is a dynamic and fast developing country; the
social situation as well as the legal framework may change
rapidly.
