NCJ Number
128707
Date Published
1991
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This essay traces how children and youth have been managed differently than adults under Canadian criminal law.
Abstract
Between 1908 and 1984 in Canada, the Juvenile Delinquents Act allowed wide judicial and administrative discretion regarding the disposition of delinquent juveniles. It linked the criminal process for juveniles with health, education, and welfare institutions. One of the primary functions of the Juvenile Delinquents Act was to dramatize symbolically and ritually popular concerns about the "bad child" and to construct the image of the "good child." The law intended to give the impression of moral order as much as to prevent crime and guarantee public safety. The Young Offenders Act, enacted in 1984, aims to limit official discretion by confining delinquency to acts specified in the Criminal Code and by introducing other legalistic elements such as more due process protections for accused juveniles, including a right to counsel and a maximum sanction of 3 years incarceration. Problems in administering juvenile justice continue, however, including disparity in processing across jurisdictions and arbitrary decisionmaking. The public culture continues to play out the politics of childhood and adulthood in moral panics about crime and vice among marginalized youth. The social hierarchies and practices that perpetuate age-grading are too entrenched to be changed in the short-term by law reform and legal challenges. 52-item annotated reading list