SOC 1500 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Lawbreakers, Halfway House, Youth Criminal Justice Act
1 Jun 2018
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SOC 1500
CHAPTER 7
FROM JUVENILE DELINQUENCY TO YOUTH CRIME
How Canada Has legislated and Responded to Young Offenders
Introduction
• Welfare model
o Vieed hildre ad adolesets as ulerale, ioet, ad depedet
o Lacking full responsibility for their delinquent behaviour
▪ Entitled them to full protection of society
• Contemporary Canadian youth court
o Recognizes children as fully responsible and rational actors
o Deserving of all legal rights and service, but fully deserving of punishment in proportion
to the severity of their wrongdoing
The Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908
• First piece of legislation pertaining specifically to juveniles
• Most severe sentence: institutionalization in a training school where emphasis was on discipline
and character training
• Thought that treating old and youth criminals was inhumane
• Thought that reacting to youth offenders as hardened criminals and placing them in adult
prisons extinguished any possibility to reform
• A delinquent, according to the law was
o Any child who violates any provision of the Criminal Code or any Dominion or provincial
statute, or of any by-law or ordinance of any municipality, or who is guilty of sexually
immorality or any similar form of vice, or who is liable by reason of any other act to be
committed to an industrial school or juvenile reformatory under the provisions of any
Dominion or provincial statute
• Status offences
o Robbery, assault, theft
• Consumption of alcohol, truancy, running away from home, sexual activity, refusal to obey
parents, having delinquent friends, use of profanity were considered illegal because the
individuals engaging in thee activities were underage
• Juvenile judges were given leeway regarding the punishment that wrongdoers should receive
o Adult offenders found guilty of a crime received a fixed-term sentence
• Two kinds of custodial dispositions were available under the JDA
o Coitet to a loal Childre’s Aid “oiety
o Coitet to a idustrial shool
▪ Secure institutions
▪ Young offenders tended to stay until training school authorities decided to
release them
• See juvenile court as a product of a moral crusade to control and subjugate youthful members
of the dagerous lasses
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
o Working class and immigrant populations
• Platt
o Upper-middle class women who were the architects of American juvenile justice
legislation were conservative reforms who wanted to improve the circumstances and
life chances of lower-class youth without rearranging the structure and distribution of
wealth in American society
• Harvey and Kupchik
o Juvenile delinquent legislation that extended governmental control over the youth and
marginal
• Sutherland
o Believed the motives of the Canadian reformers responsible for the JDA have been
defended as more altruistic than self-serving
• Complaints about the juvenile justice legislation
o Ever-increasing punitiveness
o Concerns about tis expansive and paternalistic nature
o Can be seen in contemporary concerns about the net-widening effects of risk
assessment exercises and early intervention strategies aimed at both young offenders
and potential young offenders
• First 50 years of operation
o Viewed as benignly
o Chaged i 96’s
▪ Recorded levels of juvenile crime rose dramatically
• Postwar baby boomers moved into adolescence, the peak years of
crime increased
▪ Discovered that many juvenile offenders, like their adult counterparts, were
repeat offenders
• High rates of delinquency and recidivism were not a good
advertisement for a juvenile justice system that claimed to be
rehabilitating young lawbreakers
• Some believed youth justice system had become too soft on delinquency, many policy makers
and academics found fault with it because it afforded inadequate protection for young people in
trouble with the law
• JDA was replaced by the Young Offenders Act in 1985
The Young Offenders Act
• Introduced due process rights
o The right to a lawyer and rights to appeal
o Eliminated indeterminate sentences
▪ Makes those sentences proportionate ones
• Any punishment imposed upon a young offender has to fit the
seriousness of the offence
o Most serious offence
▪ 3 years max
• Complaints
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
How canada has legislated and responded to young offenders. Juvenile delinquent legislation that extended governmental control over the youth and marginal. Jda was replaced by the young offenders act in 1985. Swinging the pendulum: amending the ycja: removal of the presumption against a custodial sentence requirement. Involves use of conferences chaired by trained facilitators, and attended by young offenders, their parents, victims, and police officers: actuarial paradigm, assess youth offender in terms of their capacity for harmful behaviour. Impact of imprisonment, correctional-based programs, community-based programs, group-based programs, and those tailored to meet the needs of individual offenders: none of them worked very well, bernard. Justice system has received a bum rap: all assessments of treatments and programs for juveniles begin with the acknowledged failures of the system. Lundman: area projects, chicago school, social disorganization. Incapacitating those who are most likely to be repeat offenders: most young offenders only commit one offence.
