NCJ Number
139318
Journal
Canadian Journal of Law and Society Volume: 6 Dated: (1991) Pages: 45- 63
Date Published
1991
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Recent proposals to reform Canada's Young Offenders Act to address the issue of how to respond to serious juvenile offenders are assessed in view of recent developments in juvenile justice policy in the United States that have also been designed to meet serious and chronic youth criminality.
Abstract
The analysis notes that neither Canadian nor American policymakers have yet articulated a fully satisfactory alternative to the model on which juvenile justice policy has been based for almost a century. Nevertheless, a series of State legislative reforms in the United States, in which individual responsibility and system accountability replace rehabilitation as the main objective of juvenile justice policy, offers a comprehensive, if imperfect, model for reform. In particular, Washington State's 1977 juvenile justice law provides a useful model. Footnotes (Author abstract modified)