Youth Crime And The Youth Justice System In Canada

The Youth Criminal Justice Act replaces the Young Offenders Act to provide the legislative framework for a fairer & more effective youth justice system.

The authors describe what is known about Canadian youth crime, and the operation of the youth justice system in the context of the changes in the law that are taking place. The authors posit that the youth justice system has a relatively modest impact on youth crime. In order to respond intelligently to it and to evaluate the response of the state, two sets of information must be understood. First, society must try to understand what 'youth crime' looks like in Canada. Second, in order to understand 1 and evaluate 1 the changes that are being made in youth justice legislation in Canada, a clear understanding of the manner in which the youth justice system currently operates is necessary.

Most youth who come in conflict with the law have experienced some form of trauma, yet many justice professionals are ill-equipped to deal with the effects trauma has on youth and instead reinforce a system that further traumatizes young offenders while ignoring the needs of victims. By taking a trauma-informed perspective, this text provides a much-needed alternative--one that allows for interventions based on principles of healing and restorative justice, rather than on punishment and risk assessment. In addition to providing a comprehensive historical overview of youth justice in Canada, Judah Oudshoorn addresses the context of youth offending by examining both individual trauma--including its emotional, cognitive, and behavioural effects--and collective trauma. The author tackles some of the most difficult problems facing youth justice today, especially the ongoing cycles of intergenerational trauma caused by the colonization of Indigenous peoples and patriarchal violence, and demonstrates how a trauma-informed approach to youth justice can work toward preventing crime and healing offenders, victims, and communities. Featuring a foreword written by Howard Zehr, case stories from the author's own work with victims and offenders, questions for reflection, and annotated lists of recommended readings, this engaging text is the perfect resource for college and university students in the field of youth justice.

In the past ten years, much has changed in terms of youth justice policies in Canada as well as in the way Canadian society has evolved. Canada has a new Act governing youth crime, and there are indications that the Act will be revised again to make it "tougher" on youth in conflict with the law, a development reflecting what many scholars are calling the "punitive turn" in youth justice policies in Canada and elsewhere. At the same time, Canadian child poverty rates (which are strongly correlated with criminality) have remained high, despite a commitment, made by governments in 1989 to eradicate the problem by the year 2000. Immigration patterns have changed, and unemployment rates for young Canadians remain almost twice as high as those for adults. In this volume, Youth Criminal Justice Policy in Canada: A Critical Introduction, the author addresses these and other developments in relation to youth crime in Canada from a critical criminological perspective.

"Since its implementation in 2003, the Youth Criminal Justice Act has been the subject of intense political and scholarly debate. A complicated mixture of provisions intended to provide harsher punishments for serious violent crimes while encouraging positive, non-punitive interventions in less serious cases, its impact on the youth justice system remains controversial. Implementing and Working with the Youth Criminal Justice Act across Canada provides the first comprehensive, province-by-province analysis of how each Canadian jurisdiction has implemented the Act in accordance with its own history, traditions, and institutional arrangements. Drawing on in-depth interviews with probation officers, counselors, educators, and social workers, the contributors use the experiences of practitioners to offer a new analytical perspective on a complicated and contentious aspect of the Canadian justice system. Their conclusions provide vital policy and program information for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers concerned with Canada's youth justice systems."--