improvements of our youth criminal justice system

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When thinking about youth crime do you envision a country with a high rate of young offenders, gang activity and re-offending? Or do you envision a country with a significant increase of young offenders either being successfully reintegrated into society, or helped by a community when seeking forgiveness for a minor offence that they have committed? Since the passing of Bill C-7 or the Youth Criminal Justice Act on February 4, 2002 by the House of Commons, many significant improvements have been made in Canada’s youth criminal justice system on how to handle and care for young offenders. Some of the reasons why Bill C-7 was passed in Canada was because the bill before it, Young Offenders Act, had many problems and suffered large amounts scrutiny by Canadian Citizens. It’s because of these reasons that Bill C-7 had been revised multiple times before being passed, having previously been called Bill C-68, March of 1999 and Bill C-3, in October 1999. With this all being said, many Canadian citizens are still left to ponder a question of if there is even significant improvement in our Youth Criminal justice system when comparing the Youth Criminal Justice Act to the Young Offenders Act? In my opinion, there are many significant improvements that have been made in the Youth Criminal Justice Act which have aided our justice system. By addressing the weaknesses of the Young Offenders Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act has helped Canada improve in the field of youth criminal justice by implementing better Extrajudicial Measures, ensuring effective reintegration of a young person once released from custody and providing much more clarification on sentencing options.

To begin, Extrajudicial Measures are methods used in order to deal with...

... middle of paper ...

... parliament has enhanced its Extrajudicial Measures, ensured effective reintegration of a young person once released from custody while creating more jobs and lowering crime re-offending rates and provided much needed clarification on sentencing options giving better guide lines to courts. Although The Youth Criminal Justice Act remains a very important acts with a lot of improvements there are still many problems contained within the act that are still to be improved. With this closing I must insist on posing the following question, Will there ever be a non problematic piece of legislation? One can only envision the answer, for now that is.

Works Cited

http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/Statcan/85-002-XIE/0060085-002-XIE.pdf

http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/CIR/8613-e.htm

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2008003/article/10566-eng.htm

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