The issue of youth justice in Canada began as early as the twentieth century with the formation of the Juvenile Delinquent Act (JDA)which was used from 1908 to 1984for youth justice. Under this act, the JDA, youth deviance was considered an aggregate of the social-economic and cultural systems existing in a given society. Interventions were aimed at reforming the youth offenders’ behavior rather than punishing them. However, in the early 1960s things changed with criticism of the arbitrary way of administering suctions for youth offenders under the Juvenile Delinquent Act.
Reviews were made on this act by legislators in 1982 after criticism from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The federal government responded by introducing the Young Offenders Act, (YOA) in 1984.
This act advocated for youth rehabilitation and societal protection of the young youth minor offenders. (Richard Maclure, University of Ottawa, Faculty of education, Ottawa, Canada.). The act also enforced community-based diversion programs that reduced the exposure of youths to formal judicial action that could lead to violation of children’s rights.(Corrado and Marakwart, 1994). The Young Offenders Act was later replaced by the Youth Criminal Justice Act enacted in 2003 by the federal government to the use of suctions and change of the extrajudicial measures taken against young offenders.
This paper presents a phenomenological focus on the implementation of diversion for youth justice in the urban community in Southern Ontario since there lacks enough research over diversion implementation in youth justice in the societies.
Social policy implementation
The social policy implementation must focus on changing the social behavior of the youths in the society as their attitude of the minor youth offenders. The social policy should not be gender biased and therefore should ensure uniformity in their implementation. Appropriation to both the professional practitioners and the society should also be considered before implementation. (Shore and Wright, 1997).
In the Young Offenders Act, the involvement of the police in the diversion process of the Canadian Youth Justice system worsened the problem with the youth offenders because they ended up rebelling against stigmatization. This led to the continued involvement of the youth in criminal offenses. The implementation of diversion aimed at punishing the young offenders as well as rehabilitating them from ill behaviors which were accrued to their physical and mental immaturity. (Becker, 1973).
The Young Offenders Act of 1984 stipulated a principle which stated that ”Where it is not inconsistent with the protection of society, taking no measures or taking measures other than judicial proceedings should be considered for dealing with young persons who have committed offenses”(Clark, 1994). The YOA reduced the overburdening of youth courts with minor youth crimes and also decentralized the society’s responsibility in youth justice administration.
Diversion Programs in Ontario
In Canada, the administration of youth justice is independent in every province even though the youth justice policy is a universal legislative act of the federal government. The administration of these policies is also decentralized in each province and therefore varies from one community to the other within the same province.
In Southern Ontario province, in one urban community, the use of an alternative measure program which was first geared by the Young Offenders Act takes two forms. The post-charge program and the pre-charge program. In the post-charge program, the diversion implementation has been proposed by a juvenile court for youth who have been involved in an act of offense before and have been charged by the police. This program takes two phases, the first phase, Phase I, includes adolescents aged between 12 and 15 years and it is administered by a different ministry. In this phase, the alternative measures are supervised by a social worker who works under the provincial ministry of community and social services.
The second phase, Phase II takes care of the adolescents aged between 16 and 17 years whereby the alternative measures are supervised by a probation officer from the provincial ministry of corrections that is also responsible for adult offenders.
A youth offender is required to meet the assigned supervisor in the company of his or her parents or a guardian for them to agree on the appropriate disposition condition. Alternative measure programs use community service-based activities that include payment of fines, essay writing, and also restitution to the youth offenders. (Bala, 1997). Once it has been agreed upon on the community service to be done, the supervising officer must ensure that the duty is duly accomplished to his satisfaction and should be within the given period. On completing the alternative measures, the youth is set free from bad police records by dropping off his offense charges.
The other form of diversion is the pre-charge diversion that involves a youth who has been apprehended for an offense but has not been charged before for minor offenses. The major difference between the post-charge diversion and the pre-charge diversion is that in the latter there is no formal action taken against the youth and there is no legal obligation that is associated with the offenses, it usually involves verbal warnings and meeting the parents of the youth for counseling. (Kowalski, 1999).
Conclusion
The diversion programs in Canada are very effective and have succeeded in the process of administering youth justice because they are decentralized in each province. However, the diversion programs are highly criticized in Canada for being responsible for the hardcore criminal offenses among the youth who avoid juvenile court. The implementation of the diversion programs is a legislative act and should be addressed in the court of law to avoid the contradiction in the way the youths are punished and rehabilitated in Canada as revealed in the research carried out in Ontario.
References
Bala, N. (1997). Young Offenders Law, Concord: Irwin Law. pp. 36- 89.
Corrado, R. and Markwart, A. (1994) Canadian Journal of Criminology, pp. 36-78.
Hacken, J. (1995). Good people, Dirty system, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. pp. 18- 58.
Morris, A. and Maxwell, G. (2001). Restorative Justice for Juventus, Oxford : Hart Publishers.
O’Relly- Flemming and Clark, B. (1994). Community programming of young offenders in Ontario, Toronto: Canadian Scholar Press.
Shore, C. and Wright, S. (Eds) (1997). Anthropology of Policy, West Port: Ablex publishers.
Young offenders. Web.