Youth justice mock trials.

• Author: Mildon, Marsha
• Position: School's in

Introduction

The feature section of this issue of LawNow takes an in-depth look at the new Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which came into force April 1, 2003, explaining the most significant changes from the Young Offenders Act. Already, there are also a variety of explanatory resources online for both teachers and students who wish to explore the details or philosophy of this Act (see Online Law in this issue).

Over the past 20 years, there have been numerous studies evaluating the effectiveness of law-related education, and these studies have pointed to two broad findings:

* Students who are exposed to law-related education programs that are properly implemented are less likely to participate in delinquent activities; and

* Key factors related to the likelihood that delinquent tendencies are reduced include

--regular use of teaching strategies that foster true interaction and joint work among students, and

--careful selection and presentation of illustrative case materials to create an immediate sense of reality and to promote student interest and participation. (Social Science Consortium and the Centre for Action Research in the United States)

Obviously, we'd all like to see fewer and fewer students participating in delinquent behaviour. So this issue of School's In will present three scenarios that can be used for mock trials. The mock trial is one of the types of classroom activity that provides many opportunities for interaction and joint work. In addition, the scenarios can be designed to suggest things that might occur in any junior or senior high school. Because of the nature of the new YCJA, these scenarios may not always result in trials, but in other ways of approaching youth justice such as conferences.

Objectives

The learning objectives for these mock trials are three:

* Students will be able to identify several key principles and features of the new Youth Criminal Justice Act, 2003;

* Students will be able to demonstrate making appropriate choices of meaningful consequences for youthful offenders;

* Students will demonstrate analyzing a scenario, presenting information, and making appropriate choices of consequences, all within small groups.

The YCJA Background

The Preamble to the Act signals the key principles that we will focus on in these mock trial scenarios:

"AND WHEREAS Canadian society should have a youth criminal justice system that commands respect, takes into account the interests of victims, fosters responsibility and ensures accountability through meaningful consequences and effective rehabilitation and reintegration, and that reserves its most serious intervention for the most serious crimes and reduces the over-reliance on incarceration for non-violent young persons ..." These principles tend to be most evident in new approaches to young offenders other than going to court; changes to sentencing in general; and changes to the procedures and sentences for young offenders, age 14 and greater, when involved in serious violent offences. These are the areas that we will highlight in these mock trials.

Procedures for Mock Trials

Choose one or more scenarios for the class to work on.

Assign roles or characters to students. (Mock trials often work well if two or more students are assigned to each role so that they can develop the role collaboratively.)

Once roles are assigned, hand out the Role Play and Personnel Cards. The Role Play card plus Personnel Cards for Defence Counsel, Crown Counsel, The Accused and Witnesses, and the Judge, Part One, are found in "Add Students and Stir" in LawNow Oct/Nov 2001, 26:2. Personnel Cards for roles from these scenarios are found below. Several students will used The Accused and Witnesses Card plus details gained from the scenarios.

After students have had a brief time to examine their Personnel Cards, hand out copies of the scenario(s), the Community Map, the Analysis Card the Youth Criminal Justice Act Cards, and the Decision Tree.

Ask student groups to analyze the key elements of the scenario using the Community Map to ground their picture of the events and the Analysis Card.

With their analysis, student groups should use the Decision Tree plus the YCJA Cards to decide on the legal issues in their scenario and to design and then present their mock youth justice trial.

If you are short of time, you could skip the actual trial section, and have students concentrate on out-of-court measures or sentencing after a guilty plea.

The Setting

These scenarios all take place in or around the Senior and Junior High...