NCJ Number
149955
Journal
Canadian Journal of Criminology Volume: 36 Issue: 3 Dated: (July 1994) Pages: 271-290
Date Published
1994
Length
20 pages
Annotation
A primary goal of Canada's Young Offenders Act (YOA) is to correct inequities that existed under the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908, and data from the 1990 Uniform Crime Report and the Youth Court Survey are used to assess the extent to which the YOA has eliminated variations among provinces in the use of custody.
Abstract
Data were tabulated by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, based on the number of young persons charged with offenses under the YOA in 1990 and on the number of young persons whose cases reached youth court. The use of custody was operationalized in two ways, the per capita rate of young persons receiving a custodial disposition or the custodial disposition rate. Jurisdictional variations in custodial disposition were evaluated in terms of processing stages, and the contribution of each stage to variations in custodial disposition rates was assessed. In 1990, 6 years after the YOA was implemented, substantial variations still occurred among Canadian provinces in the number of young offenders receiving and serving custodial dispositions. These variations appeared to be primarily due to interprovincial variations in per capita rates of juveniles charged and custodial disposition lengths. Interprovincial variations in the proportion of juveniles screened out before their cases reached court and in the proportion of juveniles convicted and sentenced to custody had smaller effects on variations in the use of custody. 16 references, 8 notes, 4 tables, and 9 figures