Crime is an unfortunate but inevitable part of every society that we are forced to face. There are many different views and opinions on Canada’s criminal justice system, but one of the most frequently debated questions is: what should Canada do with it’s young offenders? Not yet adults but offenders nonetheless, the question of what to do with juvenile delinquents is complex and controversial.
On April 1, 2003, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) officially replaced the Young Offenders Act that many felt didn't give proper guidelines on how to deal with young offenders. The YCJA applies to any criminal between the ages of 14 and 17. It’s aim is to “prevent crime by addressing the circumstances underlying a young person's offending behavior, rehabilitate young persons who commit offenses and reintegrate them back into society, and ensure that a young person is subject to meaningful consequences for his or her offenses, in order to promote the long-term protection of the public.”
Deviance, according to symbolic interactionism, is a learned behavior. I agree with this theory especially in the case of young offenders. I don’t believe that people are born criminals, but that they turn into criminals because of outside influences. Even if young offenders’ criminal behavior may be a result of unfortunate circumstances (broken families, living in a bad area, etc.) they do, as the YCJA states, need to be punished to a certain degree for their crime, whether it be through time in a juvenile detention center or community service, because I don’t believe that any crime, however big or small, deserves to go completely unpunished.The second step that needs to be taken with our young offenders is to properly reintegrate them back into society. This, in my opinion, is the most important difference in the way that we deal with our young offenders as opposed to our adult offenders because, unlike adult offenders, young offenders have their whole lives ahead of them. Before young offenders are released a social worker should do a thorough assessment of the offenders family situation or any other outside influences that may affect his/her behavior. If criminal behavior is something that is learned then the chances that he/she will re-offend in the future is much higher is he/she returns to a bad neighborhood or bad home situation. If their home situation or neighborhood is judged to be a bad influence on the child then certain measures, such as the involvement of a social worker in the child’s life, need to be taken.
At the end of March 2007, the average number of young offenders in custody in Canada totaled 205 and a very large number of these young offenders re-offended. It is that number, the number of re-offenders, that the Canadian justice system needs to focus on. While it is very important to keep Canadian youth out of jail, this is not something the justice system can control nor is it their job to control. The best that the justice system can hope to accomplish is to reduce the number of re-offenders by properly reintegrating them back into society in the hopes of a better future.
An interesting video on youth crime:
