Citation

Goonerathne I. Sri Lanka J. Forensic Med. Sci. Law 2012; 3(2): 15-21.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, University of Peradeniya, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Forensic Medicine)

DOI

10.4038/sljfmsl.v3i2.5436

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The concepts of "Child" "Juvenile" and "delinquency" are three notions that legal and medico-legal communities categorically deals with. The concept of child is not only relevant to medico-legal practice in terms of managing child abuse but also dealing with juvenile delinquents. The Term child has diverse significations in the literature. These include and not limited to "persons under the age of eighteen years of age‟, "those who have not reached "majority"‟ and "those who are under the age of fourteen‟. Many "terms" such as "minor", "infant" "juvenile" "sub adult" are used interchangeably and confusingly to denote the "child" semantically, while each term tend to own its own literal meaning . Such terms may have different connotations all together in contexts of law.
The aim of this paper is to examine and evaluate the concept of "child" ,the concept of "juvenile" and the concept of "delinquency" and their definitions as applied in the law. Although several other disciplines (e.g psychology) may have many different additional terms to denote a "child" or a "juvenile", it is not the scope of this paper to examine such other disciplines other than the discipline of law. This conceptual analysis therefore is limited to the use of the term "child" and "juvenile" and similar terminology to denote a child or a juvenile in the legal literature and medico- legal case work.