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International Handbook of Juvenile Justice

Abstract

Prior to 2003, Canada discretionary approach to youth justice resulted in the country having one of the highest rates in the world for use of courts and custody for adolescent offenders. The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) came into force in 2003 and has significantly structured the discretion of police, prosecutors and judges, and been accompanied by very substantial reductions in youth charging and use of custody for adolescents and more use of community-based sentencing options; youth crime has fallen slightly. Canada’s federal parliament has jurisdiction over juvenile justice legislation, while provincial and territorial governments are responsible for the establishment of youth courts and the provision of services for young offenders, as well as jurisdiction over child welfare, so there is significant variation in the implementation of the law across Canada. There are concerns in Canada about such issues as overrepresentation of visible minority and Aboriginal youth in custody.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the UCR Survey, a “chargeable” person is defined as “person who has been identified as an accused person in an incident and against whom a charge may be laid in connection with that incident” (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics 2013: 14)—whether or not that person was actually arrested or charged.

  2. 2.

    “Other” crime in the UCR Survey includes weapons possession and storage, prostitution, gambling, other public orders, administration of justice, serious traffic, drug-related, and miscellaneous offenses.

  3. 3.

    In Canada, excluding Quebec and Alberta, due to unavailability of data for some years for those provinces

  4. 4.

    The excluded provinces, Quebec and Alberta, accounted for approximately 35 % of the population of Canada in 2014 (Statistics Canada 2015c).

  5. 5.

    The statistics reported in Table 5.3 are for all ages from 12 to 17. As female offenders tend to be younger than males (Carrington 2007), their more lenient treatment might be due to the age difference. However, breakdowns by age group (12–15 and 16–17) (not shown in Table 5.3) replicated the gender differences show in Table 5.3, with rare exceptions that are noted in the text.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter reports analyses of data provided by Statistics Canada. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of Statistics Canada. Preparation of this chapter was supported by a research grant to the second author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

    Nicholas Bala

  2. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Peter J. Carrington

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Correspondence to Nicholas Bala .

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  1. School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

    Scott H Decker

  2. California State University, San Bernardino, California, USA

    Nerea Marteache

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Bala, N., Carrington, P.J. (2017). Canada. In: Decker, S., Marteache, N. (eds) International Handbook of Juvenile Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45090-2_5

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