CRM 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mens Rea, Code Of Law, Premiership Of Stephen Harper
19 Jun 2018
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CRM100
Lecture 11
The Youth Criminal Justice System
Relationship between punishment and rehabilitation
- How do you take someone who engaged in criminal activity and rehabilitate them
- How do we make sure they are not going to continue to engage in criminal activity when
they leave
- Programs, policies, institutions designed to rehabilitate people
- Underlining psychological aspect to this
- Rehabilitate is hinged on people accepting responsibility for actions, people most
rehabilitate if they admit to wrong doings, and accept responsibility
- Offender has to buy into system to be successful in rehabilitation
- Important for these people to also rebuild connections with community, rehabilitation
most successful when people take ownership for what they did and make amends with
community
- How do you keep society safe and also rehabilitate people- central challenge
Treating children as distinct entities
- One segment of community that poses challenge is young people
- Society draws distinction between adults and young people
- 18 is the divide there between people having different responsibilities for actions
- research shows only in early 20s, your brain is fully developed and fully understands
preconceptions of behaviour and actions
- people under age of 18 are treated as distinct entities
- raises deep principals of common law- mens rea – matters whether someone who engages
in criminal act had intent
- question of intent is complicated when we deal with young people because research
shows us because of questions of neurological development young people cannot make
sound decisions adults can make, may act more spontaneously, we understand them to be
not fully mature
- someone who is 15, with a group of friends, someone in group of friends will engage in
criminal activity with peers but someone that is 25 might not
Controversial issue
- public may get very upset over it
- many people feel that provisions of how we deal with youth criminals are far too lenient
- a lot of people who get very upset over fact that younger children get sentenced short
sentences for serious crimes, not incarcerated in prisons, not tried as adult
- slap on the wrist
- people want the gravest possible punishment
- when people hear of very serious crimes, they want people to be locked up in harsh
conditions for a long time
- public tend to not hear of overwhelming amount of crimes young people engage in
- young people crimes are petty, vandalism, small amounts of drugs
- not a lot of cases that young engage in violent crimes
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