Youth Justice

The Background of Youth Justice

Some people may think that the background in Youth Justice is very boring and uninteresting, but it is the complete opposite. The background in Youth Justice is the most interesting part. It tells who commits more crimes, the offenders’ age, what factor age plays into youth justice, the punishments youth receive, and their gender. The background of youth justice is a real eye opener to people because they don’t realize the reasoning and truth behind it all.

Youth Justice is for youths between the ages of 12-17. If the offender is from the ages 16-17,depending on the offense they are for the most part brought to an adult court, unless the lawyers can convince the judge to keep it within the youth court. Stevenson, Tufts, Hendrick and Kolwalski (1998) show that in 1997, 7% of 12-13 year olds, 11% of 14-15 year olds, and 15% for 16-17 year olds were involved in more serious crime such as break and enter and theft over 5,000.

Dauvergne shows in this graph the statistics from Stevenson et al. in 1998 to the statistics in 2007. It shows that over the past 20 years, the total of both youth crime rate and property crime has decreased, but violent crime has increased. The reasoning for the decrease over these years is because there were approximately 135,500 less non-violent offences.
The crime rate is different for each province in Canada. Dauvergne shows in the chart below the differences.

Prince Edward Island had the lowest crime rate in Canada in 2007, and Saskatchewan had the highest with 13,225.
In 2008 the youth crime rate continued to decrease but Saskatchewan remained the province with the highest youth crime rate.
In 2007 Newfoundland and Labrador was the only province to report an increase in violent crime. Newfoundland’s increase was 11%. The reasoning for the increase was because of an increase in common assults.

Police cannot charge children under the age of 12 year old. The provincial/ territorial children welfare laws deal with these children, where most times they are referred to child welfare or therapy. Compared to the older youth (ages 12 to 17) the younger youth from 12 and under committed a higher percentage of property crimes and a less percentage of “other offences”. Records show that in 1997, more than 80% of children under the age of 12 suspected of crimes were accused of committing property crimes but they were not charged. Sixteen were accused of violent offences and 3% were accused of other offenses. 82% of the crimes committed by the children under the age of 12 were by males.

Also Stevenson et al. show that in 1997 it was proven that out of 121,122 young offenders 78% were males and 22% were female. In 2005 Kong and AuCoin show that out of 2,163 violations against property offender’s 1,653 of them had been mal and 510 were female. This is not only for youth but is proven that males committed more crime as adults. It is recognized that the reasoning for the behavior of youth females is because they have experienced life-changing events such as abuse, victimization, neglect, and poverty.
When it comes to race within the youth justice system black people believe that they are treated differently. Unlike in the white community where a parent or guardian would tell a child “ go tell a police, they are good guys and just want to help”, in the black communities it’s the opposite because there is a historical legacy of negative treatment towards “ Canadian blacks”. This creates problems for the blacks within the Youth Justice program. The historical legacy comes from the people they hang out with, and their personal and their parents’ experiences, which makes them less powerful so they get treated differently. Blacks believe that the justice system is against them, because a lot of court cases with young black males were results of negative encounters with the police, such as stopped and questioned without a warrant or have been abused by the police. Each year is a new year in youth justice, some maybe good others bad. As years pass the youth justice system is becoming more aware and can learn from past statistic from what works and what doesn’t work and will help them in the future.