Redefining Youth: The Call to Expand Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act

The age range that the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act falls under is from 12 to 17., which, at first glance, seems fair enough. When people turn adults, they’ve fully matured, right? However, this is often not the case. But if so, why is the act the way it is and why should it change?

Youth criminal justice was only recognized a century or so ago. However, the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood vastly differs from a century before. As stated by Jamie Armstrong and Bill O’Grady,

 “...in the early 1900s, it was likely that one or all of these turning points would have been reached by age 18. Today, however, the average person does not reach these traditional milestones until at least the mid-20s, according to data from Statistics Canada on marriage, childbirth and participation in post-secondary education.” (Policy Options Politiques)

However, the act was put into place in the early 2000s, so why would it be based off of this? This is because most of the act is based on the Juvenile Delinquents Act, which made the assumption that most of the youth criminals were underprivileged children and teens. This was recognized in 1965 by the Department of Justice’s Juvenile Delinquency Committee to change, and the initial idea would be to raise the age to possibly 21, as they knew other reasons for young criminals and their actions now. However, in the end, it would only be changed to 18 and remain that way until today, simply because they did not want it to cause too much adaptation to the new system.

Fortunately, youth criminal justice is not like this in many countries. Most notably, it is quite the opposite in European countries. There is much data to support the increase in the age range—for example, according to an Oxford Academic article and Correctional Service Canada, Germany has a 35% rate of re-offenders among juvenile custody facilities, while Canada has a 50% rate of the same statistic. All of the evidence makes it clear that Canada must make a change to its criminal justice system, and increasing the maximum age for it is a necessary and strong start to increased youth reformation.