An Empirical Assessment of the Extent of Compliance with the Composition of Family Court under the Nigerian Child Rights Act, 2003A
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Date
2023
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Published by the Department of Legislative Support Services, National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, National Assembly, Abuja.
Abstract
Juvenile justice administration is an important component of social and distributive jus
tice that focused on the well-being and welfare of children. Ordinarily in Nigeria, a child
below the age of eighteen who is in conflict with the law or beyond parental control/in
need of care and protection may have his/her case determined in the Family/Juvenile
court. However, such a child may not get justice because of the absence of experienced
hands in the mater. It is in the light of this that the major legal frameworks that regulate
the administration of juvenile justice in Nigeria advance/promote mixed tribunal in the
Family/Juvenile courts. However, in practice, the practice and procedure vary in the
Family/Juvenile courts, resulting to injustice to a lot of juveniles as large number of them
technically fall outside the scope and protection of these laws. Against this background,
this paper assesses the level of implementation of the mixed tribunal in the administration
of juvenile justice and analyzes the inherent problems and challenges faced by juvenile
offenders in the procedural process of their trials in Nigeria. With the aid of a qualitative
research methodology, the paper finds that the level of compliance with mixed tribunal is
very low. It therefore recommends the reform of the regulatory frameworks on mixed tri
bunals in order to state the roles of assessors/lay judges and benchmarks for their com
positions and sizes in the administration of juvenile justice in Nigeria.
Keywords: Corrective Institution, Family/Juvenile Court, Juvenile Justice Administra
tion,
Juvenile Offenders, Mixed Tribunal
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Corrective Institution, Family/Juvenile Court, Juvenile Justice Administra tion, Juvenile Offenders, Mixed Tribunal