New legislation: same old ideas.

• Author: Goodwin, Jan M.
• Position: Feature on Youth Justice

The latest effort at tackling youth and crime was enacted in the form of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) on April 1, 2003. It is a lengthy and complicated piece of legislation which has been likened to the Income Tax Act. If the new statute is convoluted and confusing, it could be because the subject of that legislation is by its very nature turbulent--adolescents. Excluded from the world of adults, they tend to be viewed as "potentially delinquent" (C. Bellamy, The State of the Worlds Children 2002 (New York: UNICEF). However, it is important to keep adolescent criminal behavior in perspective. The worst crime that eighty percent of adolescents will ever commit is to push their parents to the limits of their patience. Roughly twenty percent of Canadian adolescents will have one encounter with the legal system, the vast majority of those for minor crimes associated with property. Roughly ten percent will have multiple contacts with the legal system; two thirds of those involving property loss. Each year, in spite of the media focus on sensational crimes committed by youth, only about 100 adolescents across Canada commit offences considered serious enough to warrant adult penalties (Youth Justice Statistics online: Canada Justice ).

History of Youth and Crime

The development of the legislation governing young offenders is a record of our efforts to adapt to our changing perceptions of children within a criminal law context. The mid-1800s saw the first legislative recognition in Canada that children needed special treatment. An Act for the More Speedy Trial and Punishment of Juvenile Offenders was introduced on June 10, 1857 (S. Prov. C. 1857 c.29 (More Speedy Trial Act)) to deal specifically with crimes committed by young people aged 16 and younger--officially designated as "juveniles". Section 2 gave young offenders the choice of being treated as juveniles, in which case they could be summarily sentenced in youth court, or they could have an adult trial. This was the only time in Canada's legislative history that young people could choose where to be tried. Subsequent legislation puts that choice in the hands of the court.

Also in June, 1857, An Act for establishing Prisons for Young Offenders (Cap. XXVIII) (Prisons for Young Offenders Act) was passed, introducing the term "young offenders" into legal and societal vocabulary. This legislation acknowledged the young offender's choice of where to be tried, but allowed no latitude once a young person had been sentenced. This meant that a young person could be imprisoned in a Reformatory Prison farm (s. 12) or on a sailing ship designated as a "Reformatory Prison" for those offenders that "...