Youth probation officers' interpretation and implementation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act: A case study of youth justice in Canada

Many juvenile justice systems are characterized by an amalgam of different principles and ideologies, which have been incorporated into laws and policies regarding youth crime. This study examines the perceptions of youth probation officers (YPOs) concerning the 2003 Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) in Canada, which is one recent case example of a mixed model of juvenile justice. For instance, although the Act emphasizes diversion and community-based sanctions for first time and minor offenders, it also allows for adult-length custody sentences for the most serious and violent youth. This study asked YPOs about their understanding of the YCJA and their ability to apply the Act in their daily work as well as their access to community programs in 2004 and 2007. The results as well as previous research on the YCJA and policy implications are discussed.     

Toward “Safer” and “Better” Communities?: Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act,Aboriginal Youth and the Processes of Exclusion

After a decade of high incarceration rates, the Canadian Department of Justice has revised its approach to juvenile justice. Enshrined in the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), the renewed youth justice system stresses the importance and responsibility of community for crime control. While on the surface the state’s appeals to such programmes as restorative justice seem laudable, caution should be exercised in fully endorsing this approach. While community initiatives have been criticized for “widening the net of social control” and intruding state control deeper into social life, their exclusionary potential is perhaps more troubling. Following Derrida’s metaphysics of presence, I suggest that ‘community’ perpetually finds meaning in opposition to the other. In this environment, Aboriginal youth, who are among the most marginalized in Canadian society, will likely be the most unfavourably effected. This paper does not, however, entirely reject the Act’s appeal to community. Nevertheless, I argue that for meaningful challenges to contemporary constructions of community and youth justice to occur the discursive limits forced upon ‘community’ must be fractured and fashioned in ways that renounce homogeneity. We strongly believe the solution to youth crime is in the community. Give the community the ability to deal with it and they will (Canada 1997).     

Beyond proportionate punishment: Difficult cases and the 1991 Criminal Justice Act

Within six months of implementation, the Criminal Justice Act 1991, which had been hailed as the most important piece of criminal justice legislation in England and Wales for many years, was already being undermined in practice, and a new Act, which amends or even reverses some of its more progressive principles, was brought before Parliament. This paper looks at some problems of proportionality in practice — through discussion of penological principles, and through consideration of the kinds of cases which are most difficult for a desert approach. Alternative ideas are examined to see whether they could offer any better framework for penal policy and practice. A mixed theory is advocated, with parsimony as its most important principle.I am grateful to Nicola Lacey, Mike Levi, Mike Maguire and Andrew Von Hirsch for comments on the first draft of this paper.     

刑事证据视野下的具体行政行为探究

刑事诉讼中对具体行政行为的证据审查,应基于刑事证据审查标准,合理尊重其公定力,形式审查为主,以审慎态度进行实质审查,并把握不以司法裁判代替行政意志之基本原则。基于对公平正义及司法独立价值的追求,刑事诉讼中,对具体行政行为证据效力的否定,不受该行政行为是否被撤销所羁束,司法机关有权以查明的事实,据实认定。     

刑事证据视野中的盘查记录

盘查记录有《当场盘问、检查笔录》和《挡获经过(说明)》两种形式,它们在制作主体、形成时间空间、证明内容等方面具有不同特点,之所以如此,源于不同的警务机制。盘查记录的诉讼证据资格不应有任何疑问,这是因为在违法—犯罪二元追诉机制下,刑事立案前的查缉活动由负责日常警务的警察依法进行,由此获得的证据必然具有合法性。在证明作用方面,盘查记录因其证明内容的综合性、直接性和不可替代性,从而具备了很强的诉讼推进能力。从立法完善角度,应当统一盘查记录的形式,规范其制作方式和记载内容,明确盘查记录的诉讼证据地位。     

An Application of Foucauldian Concepts to Youth in the Criminal Justice System: A Case Study

In this paper, I examine the relationship between youth and the Canadian youth justice system within a Foucauldian framework. Of particular interest are the implications inherent in the interconnectedness of agencies and organizations of social control in the classification, detection, and treatment of youth in conflict with the law. I focus my analysis on the policies of one youth correctional facility located in the province of Saskatchewan to provide a practical application of Foucauldian theoretical concepts to an analysis of youth and formal social control. Lauren Eisler completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Saskatchewan and is currently an Assistant Professor of Criminology at the Brantford campus of Wilfrid Laurier University. Her work focuses on the relationship between the institutional control of disadvantaged youth and the public constructions of youth culture as criminogenic. She has done extensive consulting work for government and community organizations in Canada.     

刑事证据视野中的盘查记录

盘查记录有《当场盘问、检查笔录》和《挡获经过（说明）》两种形式,它们在制作主体、形成时间空间、证明内容等方面具有不同特点,之所以如此,源于不同的警务机制。盘查记录的诉讼证据资格不应有任何疑问,这是因为在＂违法—犯罪二元追诉机制＂下,刑事立案前的查缉活动由负责日常警务的警察依法进行,由此获得的证据必然具有合法性。在证明作用方面,盘查记录因其证明内容的综合性、直接性和不可替代性,从而具备了很强的诉讼推进能力。从立法完善角度,应当统一盘查记录的形式,规范其制作方式和记载内容,明确盘查记录的诉讼证据地位。     

Kids are Different: The United States Supreme Court Reforms Youth Sentencing Practices for Youth Prosecuted in the Criminal Justice System

In a series of decisions issued between 2005‐2016, the United States Supreme Court relied on emerging scientific research detailing the developmental differences between children and adults to revamp its juvenile sentencing jurisprudence under the Eighth Amendment. The research established that youth’s developmental immaturity reduces their culpability for their criminal conduct, while also demonstrating their heightened capacity for change and rehabilitation. The Court focused on the most extreme sentences for youth, banning the imposition of the death penalty on youth under the age of eighteen in Roper v. Simmons (2005), and severely limiting the availability of life without parole sentences even for youth convicted of murder, in Graham v Florida (2010) and Miller v Alabama (2012). This article traces the Court’s evolution in reviewing sentences for youth in our justice system, and considers how the Court’s reasoning in these cases may influence further reforms in the justice system’s treatment of youth looking ahead.     

The International Criminal Court and Africa: Exemplary Justice

This is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the causal link (if any) between international criminal trials and preventing violence through exemplary prosecutions. Specifically how do representative trials of persons accused of having the greatest responsibility for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, supposedly bind recurrent violence? The argument pursued is that by using an accused as an example, a court engages in an indirect and uncertain substitution of personal rights for social harmony and order. These prosecutions combine a peculiar rhetoric, logic and aesthetic, all which substitute the responsibilities for a society in general to a particular individual in order to redeem that society by transferring its communal responsibility onto the individual punished as a form of atonement or expiation. International and domestic trials, as well as truth and reconciliation commissions, are part of a suite of options addressing communal mass violence that can work in tandem. However, because those convicted do not have a monopoly on criminality, nor do those merely reconciled have a monopoly on virtue, exemplification through punishment only targets a few on behalf of the many. Indeed such a redemptively sacrificial economy distinguishes legal justice from mere vengeance.