Court Observation
Juvenile crime is undoubtedly a controversial issue in Canadian politics. With decades of research and multiple different acts that have been passed in regards to the juvenile/youth justice system, youth justice in Canada is found to be quite lamentable. What is meant by “controversy” in juvenile crime is that there are many disagreements on the action that is necessary in dealing with a juvenile delinquent. Is the punishment too small? Is the punishment too severe? The controversy behind this is an occurring process to this day and we will look further into how youth justice started, and how it came to be to this day. I had the chance to go view a juvenile delinquent’s court case proceeding. The court room consisted of …show more content…
Most importantly with this legislation being introduced, it guaranteed right to obtain and instruct legal counsel. With this being said of the YOA, this also ties into what we have today in the YCJA. In both legislations during a court case proceeding in action, defendants have the right to have help from a counsel, and if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, require that the government appoint one or pay the defendant 's legal expenses. In the case I went to see, the defendant did in fact have a lawyer present during the proceeding because it is their right to have one if needed, just like in the YOA. This act also established the national age of criminal responsibility at 12 years old. In today’s world of the criminal justice system the age varies from province to province, and each province has more discretion as to what the cut off age will be. But what could the change in ages be a result of? There may be many factors that vary between provinces that enact them to select a certain age of criminal responsibility. The establishment of the YOA brought a few good things to the table for that of youth offenders. But was the YOA too good for youth offenders? Based on page 49 of the textbook, official data tells us that in the early 1990s about 18.6 per cent of young offenders who appeared in court have had five or more prior convictions. Approximately 46 per cent of those charged in youth court had one or more prior convictions since 1984. It got even worse in the late 1990s where nearly 42 per cent of cases with convictions involved repeat offender. The jist of these statistics displays that the older a youth gets, the more likely it becomes that he or she has had prior charges. With only a short span of 15 years, the cons outweighed the pros resulting in another shift away to another “act”. Critics of the YOA found that it was representing an unfortunate shift away
Juvenile crime is undoubtedly a controversial issue in Canadian politics. With decades of research and multiple different acts that have been passed in regards to the juvenile/youth justice system, youth justice in Canada is found to be quite lamentable. What is meant by “controversy” in juvenile crime is that there are many disagreements on the action that is necessary in dealing with a juvenile delinquent. Is the punishment too small? Is the punishment too severe? The controversy behind this is an occurring process to this day and we will look further into how youth justice started, and how it came to be to this day. I had the chance to go view a juvenile delinquent’s court case proceeding. The court room consisted of …show more content…
Most importantly with this legislation being introduced, it guaranteed right to obtain and instruct legal counsel. With this being said of the YOA, this also ties into what we have today in the YCJA. In both legislations during a court case proceeding in action, defendants have the right to have help from a counsel, and if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, require that the government appoint one or pay the defendant 's legal expenses. In the case I went to see, the defendant did in fact have a lawyer present during the proceeding because it is their right to have one if needed, just like in the YOA. This act also established the national age of criminal responsibility at 12 years old. In today’s world of the criminal justice system the age varies from province to province, and each province has more discretion as to what the cut off age will be. But what could the change in ages be a result of? There may be many factors that vary between provinces that enact them to select a certain age of criminal responsibility. The establishment of the YOA brought a few good things to the table for that of youth offenders. But was the YOA too good for youth offenders? Based on page 49 of the textbook, official data tells us that in the early 1990s about 18.6 per cent of young offenders who appeared in court have had five or more prior convictions. Approximately 46 per cent of those charged in youth court had one or more prior convictions since 1984. It got even worse in the late 1990s where nearly 42 per cent of cases with convictions involved repeat offender. The jist of these statistics displays that the older a youth gets, the more likely it becomes that he or she has had prior charges. With only a short span of 15 years, the cons outweighed the pros resulting in another shift away to another “act”. Critics of the YOA found that it was representing an unfortunate shift away