Juveniles

The term juvenile includes both a ‘child’ and a ‘young person’ and is used to refer to persons under 16. 2 This is still the law in some Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions, but in other jurisdictions the law has been amended to increase the age. In the Bahamas, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago a juvenile is a person under 18. 3 In Guyana it is a person under 17. 4 Grenada appears to have neither a Juveniles Act nor a Children and Young Persons Act 5 and the relevant law on procedure for trial of a child is contained in s 84 of the Criminal Procedure Code in which the child for the purposes of that section is designated a person under 14 years. In general, while a child is under 14 years old, a ‘young person’ is 14 to under 16, 17 or 18, as the case may be. The Child Care and Protection Act 2004 of Jamaica, which repealed the Juveniles Act and came into effect in 2005, defi nes ‘child’ as a person under 18. There is thus no separate defi nition of juvenile or young person in Jamaica.