2024, Vol. 9, Issue 4, Part A

Juvenile crime in India has become a serious concern. As per National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the overall number of juveniles in conflict with the law has only increased, although crimes committed by juveniles below 16 years of age are decreasing.

NCRB data from 1963-2022 shows fluctuating but recently declining juvenile apprehensions for below 16-year-olds. This paper aims to forecast the annual juvenile apprehensions (AJA) in India using Time Series Models such as Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Holt’s Linear Exponential Smoothing while following the Box-Jenkins methodology. While Holt's model proved best, the performance metrics of both models were similar, making the choice dependent on the parsimony principle. The forecast indicates a declining trend in juvenile apprehensions and can be considered as a proxy for predicting future juvenile crime volumes. The data source is NCRB reports from 1963 to 2022, covering Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Special and Local Laws (SLL) crimes committed by under 16 year old juveniles.