WhatFinger


Youth Criminal Justice Act

YCJA is institutionalized insanity



A lawyer friend of mine once remarked that Canada has a legal system, which should never be confused with a justice system. How right he was, given that heinous criminals re-offend with the regularity of laxative users.

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Worst of all, certain legalities apply only to specific groups. The most glaring example is the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which subscribes to the conceit that youth crime is largely about the intemperate exuberance of youth. As a result individuals who commit a crime while still under the age of 18 are treated differently in the legal system than those over the age of 18. Only trouble with that fine legal distinction, the law doesn’t seem to take into account the severity of much of the crime committed by minor criminals. Whether it’s breaking windows, stealing cars, dealing drugs, robbing stores or murdering another human, the YCJA in Canada tends to treat all of it equally. Police and the media are prohibited by law from publicly identifying the young perpetrators unless they are extremely dangerous and in flight. Sentencing of those young offenders found guilty tends to be less severe than that of criminals over the age of 18. For those who have never spent a morning sitting in youth court, I strongly recommend it as it lends great insight into how young offenders fare in the legal system. Back in the old days when it was legal to publicly identify those young people convicted of crimes, there was an element of shame attached to the entire process. Watching young people in youth court today is being able to witness first hand the effects of the joke we call the YCJA has on young criminals. The vast majority of young offenders who find themselves facing a judge today think of the whole experience as a lark as a legal aid lawyer explains to the court that Billie is really a good boy at heart and he didn’t intend to hurt that old lady whose purse he snatched after knocking her to the ground. More often than not judges are taken in by the malarkey they are fed by the defense attorneys and issue sentences that amount to a mere slap on the wrist or a time-out. It’s bad enough when an adult convicted of murder is issued a “life” sentence, which means he’ll be back out on the streets within ten to fifteen years. But when a young offender is sentenced for the same crime, the prison term is likely to be 3 to five years at most. We have all heard the rationale for the YCJA and its predecessors, the various young offenders acts, ad nauseum. Yes, they are intended to rehabilitate rather than punish and give a young offender a second chance at becoming a productive member of society. Many young offenders do eventually enter adulthood rehabilitated because they know the day they turn 18 any crimes they commit will be dealt with in adult court. But as long as they’re considered young offenders under the law, what’s to keep them from doing whatever they want whenever they want. And sometimes that involves the taking of another person’s life, given the near total lack of accountability they face under the YCJA. My sense is that rather than serve as a deterrent to crime among young people, the YCJA serves to encourage criminal behavior by buffering the perpetrators against any severe consequences. There’s nothing wrong with the idea that young people should be dealt with differently than adults in criminal court. What’s wrong is that the one-size-fits-all consequences of the YCJA don’t take into account the seriousness of some crimes. If we are to have a separate legal code governing miscreants who are minors, that code should at least take into account the seriousness of the crime. Where violence and grievous injury is inflicted on others by young offenders, the resulting prosecution should not be under the auspices of the YCJA, but under the criminal code; the same criminal code that applies to over the age of 18, along with the same sentences.


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Klaus Rohrich -- Bio and Archives

Klaus Rohrich is senior columnist for Canada Free Press. Klaus also writes topical articles for numerous magazines. He has a regular column on RetirementHomes and is currently working on his first book dealing with the toxicity of liberalism.  His work has been featured on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, among others.  He lives and works in a small town outside of Toronto.

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