...Should the minimum age of criminal responsibility be raised? ‘Boys will be boys’, but at what age does this no longer apply? At what age is a boy expected to take on the responsibilities of a man? The Children and Young Persons Act 1963 (s.16) provides that ‘It shall be conclusively presumed that no child under the age of ten years can be guilty of an offence’. This means that once a child in the UK reaches the age of ten they are as exposed and liable to the full weight of the law the same as any adult. The UK currently has the lowest minimum age of criminal responsibility (except Scotland at 8 but cannot be prosecuted until 12) within the European Union. This places the UK significantly below the average of 14 years old. There seems to be little justification for this deviance from the norm in regards to the minimum age of responsibility in the UK and there have been considerable publications pushing for the UK to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the last decade, providing substantial evidence in favour of doing so. The evidence supporting the need to raise this minimum age can be found not only in psychology and scientific research regarding the brain development of youth and autonomy of children at this age, but also the severe social implications of criminalizing our youth. In order to argue that the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) should be raised it will be necessary to identify and evaluate this evidence, as well as identifying...
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...Yvette Ortega CJA/484 Claudio Morales 10/01/13 Criminal Law Foundations Evaluation the Juvenile Justice System Juvenile justice is the section of law that applies to persons under the age of 18 not capable of receiving sentencing in the adult court system or old enough to be responsible for criminal acts committed in society. In most states the age of criminal culpability is 18 however, the age requirement can be set lower in accordance to certain crimes and statutes set by the state the juvenile lives in. Juvenile law is primarily run by state law and most states enforce a specific juvenile code the system follows. The juvenile justice system primarily focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishment for youthful offenders. Society appears to concentrate that children are more capable of change than adult offenders more capable of knowing right from wrong ("Cornell University Law School," nod.). The statutes creating the juvenile court systems and methods of allocating with juvenile delinquency are run by courts as a suitable extension of state police power to warrant the safety and welfare of children in the system. The doctrine of parent’s patria allows the state to promulgate for the safeguard, care, custody, and upkeep of children within its jurisdiction. In 1968 the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act was put into effect, and in 1972 it was put into revision as the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act. This act set forth to assist states in dealing...
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...reassessment of the perspectives that have formed the core of criminological thought.[1] Each era of social and political turmoil has produced profound changes in people’s lives. Perhaps no such era was as significant for criminology as the 1960s. A society with conservative values was shaken out of its complacency when young people, blacks, women and other disadvantaged groups demanded a part in the shaping of national policy. They saw the gaps between philosophical political demands and reality: Blacks had little opportunity to advance women were kept in an inferior status; old politicians made wars in which the young had to die. Rebellion broke out, and some criminologists joined the revolution.[2] These criminologists turned away from theories that explained crime by characteristics of the offender or of the social structure. They set out to demonstrate that individuals become criminals because of what with power, especially those in the criminal justice system, do. Their explanations largely reject the consensus model of crime, on which all earlier theories rested. Their theories not only question the traditional explanations of the creation and enforcement of the criminal law but also blame that law for the making of criminals. It may not sound so...
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...100896803 2015 2015 There are many issues surrounding the content of Bill C-10. This essay will examine issues that affect the criminal code and provide evidence that the Bill is not progressive for Canada to deal with crime and the judicial process. By looking at the issues such as mandatory minimum sentences and the proposition of the bill we will look at the challenges that will be faced and met. The bill also introduces eliminating conditional sentences and eliminates double credit for time already served as well as introduces changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act to impose harsher sentences for young offenders. This essay will delve into information that will bring the various issues to light. Firstly an explanation of Bill C-10 will be provided to understand what changes will be made to the Criminal code and who it affects. The dissection of the Bill will open the dialogue for this essay for appropriating topical issues with the concept of progress in a manner that reflects the trouble that this Bill brings to Canadian society. Bill C-10 was introduced by the Minister of Justice on the 20th of September 2011. The Act includes the enactment of the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and amendments to the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other relevant legal documents (parl.gc.ca). Bill C-10 is also titled...
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...Canadian public perception of youth crime is that it is growing out of control and that violence crime is common. Sensationalized media coverage, frustrated law enforcement officers and vote-seeking politicians, have tended to portray only parts of the overall reality of youth crime (John Howard Society, 2008). The government of Canada has evolved over the many years to deal with youth crime from installing the Juvenile Delinquency Act in 1908 all the way to the Youth Criminal Justice Act recently amended in 2012. What these acts have accomplished is the separation of youth and adult sentences (Stevenson, 2014). This was done in order to protect children because it is the belief in Canada that children are not responsible for their actions because of Doli incapax or the inability to do wrong. That being said there is still legislation in dealing with youth crime that is punishing and effective (Stevenson, 2014). This paper will analyze a court case decision made under the Youth Criminal Justice Act which involves a young offender who was convicted of a gang-related murder and breached Conditional Supervision Order (R. v. S.(M.), 2014). This court case will be analyzed using relevant research on youth gangs using concept of theories that apply to our young offender. In conclusion, this paper will discuss limitations of laws and possible alternatives that dealt with the young offender. A summary of R. v. S.(M.), the court based decision under Youth Criminal Justice Act. Legislations...
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...Should people less than eighteen years old (minors/juveniles/adolescents) ever be tried and sentenced as adults? The legislation of trying and sentencing youth criminals under adult justice system has been a hot topic of debate. Supporters of tough laws on insist the need to enforce harsh penalties to uphold justice. The practice of treating youth criminals as adults since the 1990s is a result of the steep rise in youth crimes. However, youth advocates argue that tough laws should not be applied to youth offenders anymore. The core issue of the controversy is whether, because adolescents are biologically and mentally different from adults, they should be treated differently. For minor offenses such as property crime in which nobody is killed, it is understandable that harsh punishments are not necessary. But there need to be tougher penalties for severe crimes that threaten and take others’ lives. Hence, juveniles under eighteen years old who commit violent crimes such as murder and rape should be tried and sentenced as adults in order to punish them for their mistakes, to lower the crime rates and to protect the society. Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor from Temple University, describes the adolescent brain as “a car with powerful gas pedal and weak brakes” (cited in Hansen, 2010, p.123). This is a good illustration of the fact that humans’ psychosocial abilities do not develop fully before reaching adulthood as cognitive abilities do. A series of experiments studying...
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...even though the JJDPA has been revised several times over the past 30 years, its basic composition has remained the same. Since the act was passed in 1974, the JJDPA focused solitary on preventing juvenile delinquency and on rehabilitating juvenile offenders. Since the original enactment of the JJDPA in 1974, the periodic reauthorizations have been controversial, as the Act's opponents have sought to weaken its protections for youth, reduce prevention resources, and encourage the transfer of youth to the adult criminal justice system. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act follow a series of federal protections, known as the "core protections," on the care and treatment of youth in the justice system. The four "core protections" of the act are, the Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders (DSO), Sight and Sound separation, Jail Removal, and Disproportionate Minority Confinement (DMC). The "DSO" and "Sight and Sound" protections were part of the original law in 1974. The "Jail Removal" provision was added in 1980 in response to finding youth incarcerated in adult facilities resulted in "a high suicide rate, physical, mental, and sexual assault, inadequate care and programming, negative labeling, and exposure to serious offenders and mental patients." The "DMC" requirement was added in the JJDPA in 1992. Literature Review The compliance of states towards the requirements of the JJDP Act is monitored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention...
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...Delinquency 1 The “Broken Home” or Broken Society A Sociological Study of Family Structure and Juvenile Delinquency By Hillary R. Sheehan Advised by Professor Chris Bickel SocS 461, 462 Senior Project Social Science Department College of Liberal Arts CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY Winter, 2010 © 2010 Hillary Sheehan Delinquency 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page Research Proposal…………………………………………………………………………3 Annotated Bibliography…………………………………………………………………...5 Outline……………………………………………………………………………………10 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..14 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………15 The “Broken Home”: Truth or Trend……………………………………………15 Statistics on Single-Parent Families and Juvenile Delinquency…………………21 Case Study……………………………………………………………………….23 Theories…………………………………………………………………………..27 Criticisms………………………………………………………………………...32 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….34 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..36 Delinquency 3 Research Proposal The goal of this research paper is to explore the topic of juvenile delinquency and to analyze the cause of such behavior. The topic of most interest is how the family structure plays a role in delinquent behavior and what can be said about the so called broken home. There is a lot of research in criminal justice that tries to explore the reasons behind people’s behavior and this paper is intending to address youth who have been involved in the system. By exploring this topic I hope to get a better...
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...Outline labelling theory and consider its usefulness in understanding youth crime and anti-social behaviour in Britain today. Labelling theory claims that deviance and conformity results not so much from what people do but from how others respond to those actions, it highlights social responses to crime and deviance Macionis and Plummer, (2005).Deviant behaviour is therefore socially constructed. This essay will describe in full the labelling theory and comment on the importance of the theory to the deviant behaviour of the youth and the anti-social behaviour of the youth in Britain today. The labelling theory becomes dominant in the early 1960s and the late 1970s when it was used as a sociological theory of crime influential in challenging orthodox positivity criminology. The key people to this theory were Becker and Lement.The foundations of this view of deviance are said to have been first established by Lement, (1951) and were subsequently developed by Becker, (1963).As a matter of fact the labelling theory has subsequently become a dominant paradigm in the explanation of devience.The symbolic interaction perspective was extremely active in the early foundations of the labelling theory. The labelling theory is constituted by the assumption that deviant behaviour is to be seen not simply as the violation of a norm but as any behaviour which is successfully defined or labelled as deviant. Deviance is not the act itself but the response others give to that act which means deviance...
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...The consequences of the Youth Criminal Justice Act [YCJA] can be referred as too light. Since the YCJA has taken over, youth crime is slowly decreasing. The discipline of the YCJA may need to become harsher. The YCJA has evolved from the harsh Young Offenders Act [YOA]. Stats on youth crime suggest that the YCJA is helping to reduce the amount of young offenders. Some cases suggest that the YCJA is not being tough enough with what young offenders are being sentenced with. The study of the human brain suggest that youths don’t understand the consequences of the crimes that they are committing resulting in the need for them to know the consequences. Through cases and the study of the human brain the YCJA needs some aspects changed for the better of society. The evolution of the YCJA has been formed from many different acts. Each act consists of similarities and differences between them. Different acts are formed over time to satisfy the needs of punishment as the world develops. The YCJA is the newest act which consist of similarities and differences of the YOA. The main difference of the YCJA and the YOA was the severity of the penalty for the crime committed. The YOA “was a highly controversial statute. While conservative politicians criticized the law for being ‘‘soft on youth crime,’’’ (Pulis). Since the YOA was soft on youth punishment, youths were not too concerned if they broke the law. Youths would break the law get a slap on the wrist and move on to committing...
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...Gang Violence: What Really is Going on? Professor Holly Walpole ENG 1270: English Composition II Module 4: Research Paper Indiana Tech 10 December 2014 Outline THESIS: Gang violence is an escalating problem in American society today I. Gangs in the United States are becoming more violent and deadly than ever. Thousands of people are dying each year from these ill-mannered thugs. II. Gangs within the past two decades, beginning in the early 1980’s a growing concern has been focused on what can be considered a social epidemic among the youth of our nation. III. In recent times, the news media has cried out against violent media, painting it as the leading cause for youth violence. Gang violence is an escalating problem in American society today. The article offers developments on the research initiated in the 1990 related to the gangs in America. It also examines the increasing proliferation of criminal gangs of Central America origin. Furthermore, it considers the threat that gang violence and gang criminal syndicalism pose to U.S. regional security and foreign policy objectives when gang widening reaches that third generation gangs. There are many different factors that can be blamed for this problem. During the last decade of the twentieth century people began searching for answers to this dilemma which is haunting America. Many tragic school shootings have taken place within the last decade that have the attention of the public. As of now, no one...
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...to Action for America's Black Youth By Carl L. Young An Alternative Plan Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science In Sociology: Corrections Minnesota State University, Mankato Mankato, Minnesota Spring 2013 Final Draft 4/20/2013 1 This Alternative Plan Paper has been examined and approved by the following members of the Examining Committee. _____________________ Dr. Leah Rogne, Advisor _____________________ Dr. William Wagner _____________________ Dr. Penny Jo Rosenthal _____________________ Dr. Nadarajan Sethuraju ________________ Date 2 Abstract This alternative plan paper examines the circumstances that have evolved as a result of the Reagan Administration’s War on Drugs and the increase of mass incarceration of the Black community. In the last thirty years, the federal government of the United States of America has engaged in campaign known as the “War on Drugs,” which has involved a variety of policies to stop the production, distribution and sale of illegal narcotics. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in a war that has targeted the most vulnerable in our society, impacting its youth for generations to come. This alternative plan paper addresses the impact of the War on Drugs and the criminal justice policies that have impacted the life chances of Black youth nationwide and calls for a new social movement, introducing a 21st century Black Youth Manifesto to ask the youth of the Black community to pick...
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...1899. The two basic principles on which the court juvenile court were founded are one, and juveniles were not mature enough to take responsibility of their actions compared to adults and two, it was easier to rehabilitate juveniles as compared to adult criminals (Grisso & Schwartz, 2000). In more than a century, these principles remained the benchmarks of the juvenile courts as they expanded from Chicago, their original birthplace, into other states and eventually in other parts of the world. However, in the recent year rising incidences of juvenile criminals being tried as adults has increased as it was before the advent of the first juvenile court. Much of this stems from the public outrage against the children who, in high numbers, are engaging in violent crimes. Many countries have adopted legislation that permits them to juveniles to be tried as adults. In some countries, there are provisions that allow prosecutors to try children as young as 14 years under certain circumstances (Grisso & Schwartz, 2000). Juvenile courts establishment aimed at separating the youthful offenders from the adult criminals and thereafter processing and rehabilitating them in forgiving and less punitive manner compared to the adult criminal system (Redding & Fuller, 2004). The main reason behind the distinction is because the juveniles are developmentally different from adult in the sense of underdeveloped self-control, increased vulnerability and influence from the outside i.e. peer pressure...
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...Criminal law in Australia is generally administered by individual jurisdictions in each state. Current studies have shown a rise in criminal crime over the period of 5 years from 2010. But how are juvenile offenders being accounted for in the Justice System? Similar to criminal law the state and territory governments are responsible for dealing with children and young people who are involved in crime. Although each state and territory has its own legislation, policies and practices, the general processes by which young people are charged and sentenced and the types of legal orders available to the courts are similar. However by the time youth are 17 and 18, most Australians are focused on finishing school and planning the next stage in their...
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...University March 16, 2014 The Age and Time for the Crime The adult criminal system is designed for the prosecution of adults not children. Both state and federal legislative have responded to juvenile crime by focusing on sending more and younger children to adult criminal court. How and where do we draw the line between adults and children? Where do we draw the line between justice and malice? Juveniles that commit crimes should be punished for the crimes that they commit, but they should not be tried as an adult. This paper will offer information on why there needs to be changes in the juvenile justice system, and it will analyze why the increased prosecution of juveniles in adult court is disastrous and nothing but a threatening policy. This policy is unjust, harmful to children and does nothing to increase public safety; consequently punishing adolescents as adults does more harm than good. Thomas J Bernard a professor of criminal justice and sociology at Pennsylvania State University explained how psychologists and sociologists saw young offenders. Bernard’s (2010) book The Cycle of Juvenile Justice recognized that minors are children and not adults. (p. 45) Bernard (2010) further explains that during the 18th century children were tried as adults. Juveniles as young as the age of seven could be tried and sentenced in criminal courts. (Bernard 2010) His research expounds on the Society for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency and their role as “child savers...
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