Dr. Pupul Dutta Prasad combines a rich work experience in the civil service with a strong academic record. He holds two Masters degrees: an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science, London (LSE) and an MA in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He also has an LLB degree from the University of Delhi. In 2022, he earned a PhD in Social Policy from the LSE. His research interests lie across the conventional disciplinary divides and include law, criminal justice policy, restorative justice, juvenile justice, comparative criminology, human rights, and policing in India.
Professionally, Dr. Prasad is a Senior Officer in the Indian Police Service (IPS). He has over 21 years of experience of working in various positions, including over a year as a United Nations Police (UNPOL) Officer in the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) headquarters in Nicosia, Cyprus where he commanded the Indian police contingent. He is a recipient of Police (Special Duty) Medal awarded by the Government of India and the United Nations Medal.
Dr. Prasad joined Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida as Professor of Practice on deputation for a period of 5 years in May 2024, having previously held the post of Inspector General of Police, South Range, Himachal Pradesh. His past appointments include Senior Superintendent of Police at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), New Delhi, and Superintendent of Police of Kinnaur, Sirmaur, and Mandi districts in Himachal Pradesh. The current role enables him to pursue his work as an educator and scholar while bridging the gap between academia and practice.
Through his writing, Dr. Prasad seeks to explore socio-legal dimensions of issues in his areas of interest and challenge dominant narratives. Aside from academic papers, he has contributed articles to The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Times of India, and The Tribune. He enjoys reading fiction and occasionally dabbles in poetry. His poems in English have been published in Spillwords, Madras Courier, Muse India, Indian Literature, and Kritya.
Professor of Practice at Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida and Indian Police Service (HP: 2003)
December 23, 2024
Continuity and Change in India’s Juvenile Justice Policy: Insights from An Empirical Study.
The literature on Indian juvenile justice tends to assume a clear distinction between ‘policy’ and ‘implementation’. Adopting a legalistic and top-down approach, juvenile justice policy is generally presented as authoritative ‘inputs’ into the subject area, whereas implementation is regarded as a technical process/exercise to execute policy into ‘outputs’ in practice. As a corollary to this, matters of policy and their interpretations, along with the underlying issues of power and politics, at the point of implementation have not received adequate attention. Consequently, there is often a bias towards overemphasizing change at the expense of stability, and relatedly, assuming the translation of policy change into a change in practice.
This paper explores key informants’ perceptions of India’s juvenile justice policy and the actual workings of Indian juvenile justice. It is based on wide-ranging interviews with actors in a variety of roles (judges, magistrates, police officers, social workers and others involved in the juvenile justice system, academics, politicians and journalists) and provides a range of new insights into the current operation of the system. The findings demonstrate the extent to which implementation makes or changes policy, and, at the same time, reveal the limits of policy. Drawing on critical works in social policy, law and criminology, the paper reflects on the continuity Indian juvenile justice policy represents at a more fundamental level, as also, critically, broader societal factors that underpin and sustain it.
