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.

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

The focus of this book is the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which came into force in 2003, and the amendments to the Act which came into force in October 2012. The 2012 amendments can in turn best be understood as the response of the current federal government to perceived limitations of the 2003 law, as well as a response to some decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada interpreting the YCJA. The present edition discusses caselaw interpreting the Act, recent social science literature, and changes in the political context and social perception of youth crime since the YCJAcame into force. Previous editions of the book have been cited approvingly by all levels of courts in Canada including the Supreme Court of Canada. The book includes discussion of constitutional, evidentiary, and procedural issues that are relevant to youth justice; it also explores some of the ethical and practical issues that confront lawyers and other professionals working in the youth justice system. As well, it considers the broader social and political context for issues of adolescent offending and youth justice. Youth Criminal Justice Lawwill appeal to a broad audience, from students of law and other related disciplines, seeking an introduction to the laws governing young people who come into conflict with the law, to lawyers, judges, probation officers, and other justice system professionals who are working in this field.

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.

This timely book, by one of Canada's leading scholars of youth justice, is a succinct and authoritative introduction to an important, controversial area of Canadian law. Our response to young persons who violate criminal law is profoundly significant not simply for those who are directly involved in the process, but also for society as a whole.

This new edition follows its predecessors by canvassing all of the recent appellate decisions that have changed the law in this area. The significant changes resulting from the 2008 Bill C-2 amendments to the Criminal Code are also explained along with the cases that have considered those new provisions."--Pub. desc.