This is an age when people are cynical and suspicious of governments and their leaders, along with anyone with authority. This paper aims to determine whether or not the people with direct connection to youth justice are beneficial instruments to the welfare of the accused offenders. Crown prosecutors, attorney general, defense lawyers, and judges are the ones with the most involvement in the legal processes that handle young offenders. Do these people have the authority or power to make beneficial decisions concerning the reform of young offenders? What are the perimeters and limitations of their power or authority? Are they prevented from being useful by the system they serve?
For the purposes of this paper, policy and law makers are considered too far removed from the people effected and are, therefore, excluded. Also excluded are the welfare workers and police officers who are closely involved with the young offenders but not in a position to decide their ultimate fates. In terms of methodology, a qualitative approach will be used initially. I will examine the roles of these people and the extent of their power. As the research progresses, a quantitative approach will be employed. I will review their decisions and the statistics concerning the success rate of the reform system. The research method that will be conducted will argue that the people mentioned above are there for the best of the children in the legal process. Whether this is true or not will be uncovered through the research materials, and scholarly sources which have significant importance to the subject being dealt with in this paper.
For the purposes of this essay, the proper definitions will be used. Crown Attorney: “ An agent of the Attorney General; prosecutor in criminal matters on behalf of the crown. ” Attorney General: “ The Principal Law officer of the crown, a Minister of the crown. ” Judge: “ The person authorized to determine any question or cause in a court. ” Finally, defense lawyers are here defined simply as lawyers or “ In the province of Quebec, an advocate, lawyer or notary and, in any other province a barrister or solicitor. ” These definitions will be expanded upon during the course of the research.
One of the issues concerning youth accused in a court of Canada is the amount of time which they spend in courtrooms; obviously the more time spent in the process, the more the youth ' s perception of the court system is negatively effected. According to a report by Jennifer Thomas composed for Juristat the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics;
In 2003/04, about six out every ten cases (61%) were processed in four months or less (from the time of the youth ' s first court appearance to the date of decision or sentencing), with 7% of cases taking longer than a year. In fact 13% of cases were completed at the first court appearance. The mean elapsed time from first court appearance to last was 141 days.
Before the Youth Criminal Justice Act was created youths spent considerably more time in court, due to the minimal options for sentencing youth. Time being spent by youth in court is significantly less than what it once was. This is because the Youth Criminal Justice Act allows a wider range of sentencing for youth and alternatives that police can proscribe for a youth limiting how many would even need to appear in court.
With court appearances being shorter, in theory the administration being discussed in this paper should have more opportunity to make more well-informed decisions concerning each youth because there are now less cases to process. Weather this is true or not is not clear particularly because little research has been conducted on this matter.
It should be noted that, although overall across Canada the number of youth court appearances are low, the number varies from province to province. The 2003/04 report found that Nova Scotia had the highest rate of court processing time of 175 days. While the Northwest Territories had the lowest time which was 52 days. This has to do with the smaller population of the territories however, more than a greater court processing procedure. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario are also leaders in length of court processing time. This is just to demonstrate that if individual investigations were conducted for the provinces on the same topic as this paper the results could be drastically different.
Another matter to keep in mind is that, according to Jane B. Sprott, Anthony N. Doob and Jenifer M. Jenkins in their 2001 report for Juristat Problem Behavior and Delinquency In Children and Youth, girls are less likely to be involved to be in violent deeds. In the more recent report by Thomas, this evidence is confirmed by the fact that males accounted for 8 of 10 cases. This is important to consider because young women and men may interpret their experiences in court and those who gave them those experiences differently.
