Juvenile justice in Queensland and Canada : new legislation reflecting new directions

Due to their similar colonial histories and common law heritage, Australia and Canada provide an ideal comparative context for examining legislation reflecting new directions in the field of juvenile justice. Toward this end, this article compares the revised juvenile justice legislation which came into force in Queensland and Canada in 2003 (Canada, Youth Criminal Justice Act, enacted on 19 February 2002 and proclaimed in force 1 April 2003; Queensland, Juvenile Justice Act, amended 2003). There are a series of questions that could be addressed including: How similar and how sweeping have been the legislative changes introduced in each jurisdiction?; What are likely to be some of the effects of the implementation of these new legislative regimes?; and, how well does the legislation enacted in either jurisdiction address the fundamental difficulties experienced by children who have been caught up in juvenile justice systems? This article addresses mainly the first of these questions, offering a systematic comparison of recent Queensland and Canadian legislative changes. Although, due to the recentness of these changes, there is no data available to assess long-term effects, anecdotal evidence and preliminary research findings from our comparative study are offered to provide a start at answering the second question. We also offer critical yet sympathetic comments on the ability of legislation to address the fundamental difficulties experienced by children caught up in juvenile justice systems. Specifically, we conclude that while more than simple legislative responses are required to address the difficulties faced by youth offenders, and especially overrepresented Indigenous young offenders, the amended Queensland and new Canadian legislation appear to provide some needed reforms that can be used to help address some of these fundamental difficulties.

Juvenile justice and truancy legislation : The move towards parental responsibilisation in Queensland

Much current Queensland media rhetoric, government policy and legislation on truancy and youth justice appears to be based on ideas of responsibilisation – of sheeting responsibility for children’s behaviour back onto their parents. This article examines the evidence of parental responsibility provisions in juvenile justice and truancy legislation in Queensland and the drivers behind this approach. It considers recent legislative initiatives as part of an international trend toward making parents ‘responsible’ for the wrongs of their children. It identifies the parental responsibility rhetoric appearing in recent ministerial statements and associated media reports. It then asks the questions – are these legislative provisions being enforced? And if so, are they successful? Are they simply adding to the administrative burdens placed on teachers and schools, and the socioeconomic burdens placed on already disadvantaged parents? Parental responsibility provisions have been discussed at length in the context of juvenile offending and research suggests that punishing parents for the acts of their children does not decrease delinquency. The paper asks how, as a society, we intend to evaluate these punitive measures against parents?

The Punitive Turn in Juvenile Justice: Cultures of Control and Rights of Compliance in Western Europe and the USA

Separate systems of justice for children and young people have always been beset by issues of contradiction and compromise. There is compelling evidence that such ambiguity is currently being `resolved' by a greater governmental resort to neo-conservative punitive and correctional interventions and a neo-liberal responsibilizing mentality in which the protection historically afforded to children is rapidly dissolving. This resurgent authoritarianism appears all the more anachronistic when it is set against the widely held commitment to act within the guidelines established by various children's rights conventions. Of note is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, frequently described as the most ratified human rights convention in the world, but lamentably also the most violated. Based on international research on juvenile custody rates and children's rights compliance in the USA and Western Europe, this article examines why and to what extent `American exceptionalism' might be permeating European nation states.

Beyond the ‘three dogmas of juvenile justice’ : a response to Weatherburn, McGrath and Bartels

In 'Three Dogmas of Juvenile Justice', Weatherburn, McGrath and Bartels identify three 'assumptions' or 'dogmas' about youth justice, on which they claim 'juvenile justice policy in Australia currently rests'.

Juvenile justice: Youth and crime in Australia [Fifth Edition]

Juvenile Justice 5th edition explores youth and crime in Australia, and the institutions and agencies associated with the administration of juvenile justice. It provides an accessible introduction to the main concepts and issues of juvenile justice and critically analyses the principles, policies and practices associated with it. The book provides clear information across a broad range of areas, and raises a number of questions about the institutions of juvenile justice and how we think about issues of juvenile justice.

The United Nations and juvenile justice: An overview

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the various United Nations instruments relevant to juvenile justice and to examine how knowledge of these can assist those interested in the protection and enhancement of young people's rights in the justice system. It is argued that whilst these instruments are variable they are valuable tools for unmasking the discriminatory and unjust treatment of young people who come into contact with the justice system.

Offending Youth : Crime, Sex and Justice

Rates of female delinquency, especially for violent crimes, are increasing in most common law countries. At the same time the growth in cyber-bullying, especially among girls, appears to be a related global phenomenon. While the gender gap in delinquency is narrowing in Australia, United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, boys continue to dominate the youth who commit crime and have a virtual monopoly over sexually violent crimes. Indigenous youth continue to be vastly over-represented in the juvenile justice system in every Australian jurisdiction. The Indigenisation of delinquency is a persistent problem in other countries such as Canada and New Zealand. Young people who gather in public places are susceptible to being perceived as somehow threatening or riotous, attracting more than their share of public order policing. Professional football has been marred by repeated scandals involving sexual assault, violence and drunkenness. Given the cultural significance of footballers as role models to thousands, if not millions, of young men around the world, it is vitally important to address this problem. Offending Youth explores these key contemporary patterns of delinquency, the response to these by the juvenile justice agencies and moreover what can be done to address these problems. The book also analyses the major policy and legislative changes from the nineteenth to twenty first centuries, chiefly the shift the penal welfarism to diversion and restorative justice. Using original cases studied by Carrington twenty years ago, Offending Youth illustrates how penal welfarism criminalised young people from socially marginal backgrounds, especially Aboriginal children, children from single parent families, family-less children, state wards and young people living in poverty or in housing commission estates. A number of inquiries in Australia and the United Kingdom have since established that children committed to these institutions, supposedly for their own good, experienced systemic physical, sexual and psychological abuse during their institutionalisation. The book is dedicated to the survivors of these institutions who only now are receiving official recognition of the injustices they suffered. The underlying philosophy of juvenile justice has fundamentally shifted away from penal welfarism to embrace positive policy responses to juvenile crime, such as youth conferencing, cautions, warnings, restorative justice, circle sentencing and diversion examined in the concluding chapter. Offending Youth is aimed at a broad readership including policy makers, juvenile justice professionals, youth workers, families, teachers, politicians as well as students and academics in criminology, policing, gender studies, masculinity studies, Indigenous studies, justice studies, youth studies and the sociology of youth and deviance more generally.-- [from publisher website]

International juvenile (in)justice : penal severity and rights compliance

This article focuses on the anomalies and contradictions surrounding the notion of ‘international juvenile justice’, whether in its pessimistic (neoliberal penality and penal severity) or optimistic (universal children’s rights and rights compliance) incarnations. It argues for an analysis which recognises firstly, the uneven, multi-facetted and heterogeneous nature of the processes of globalisation and secondly, how the global, the international, the national and the local are not mutually exclusive but continually interact to re-constitute, re-make and challenge each other.

Developing ethical identities in young offenders through restorative justice practice in Australia

Restorative justice is firmly established in Australian juvenile justice. While the official language used to describe restorative initiatives varies across states and territories, the most common form is a meeting or conference between young offenders and their victims (most commonly known as a family group or youth justice conference). During the past decade, an impressive amount of empirical research has examined how the restorative justice process affects offenders, victims and other participants (such as supporters for young offenders and victims). Results from this line of research are remarkably consistent and show that participants generally regard restorative conferences as procedurally fair and that they are satisfied with the outcomes (eg what young offenders agree to do to make up for their offending behaviour, such as offer a sincere apology or perform work for the victim or the community). What is less common, however, is the perception among participants that restorative conferences achieve the key aim of restoration.By ‘restoration’ we refer to encounters where ‘offenders apologise, their apologies are accepted, victims offer forgiveness,and conferences conclude with a feeling of mutual good will’.

Submission to the Queensland Department of Communities Review of the Juvenile Justices Act 1992 Issues Paper 2007

This submission addresses the Queensland Government’s Department of Communities Issues Paper regarding the Review of the Juvenile Justice Act 1992 (August 2007). The Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law has a Criminal Justice Program within the Law and Justice Research Centre. The members of this Program wish to participate in the debate on these issues which are critically important to the Queensland community at large but especially to our young people.

Restorative justice: Making amends, repairing relationships and healing

Since the late 1970s, there has been a significant expansion in techniques for using mediated interactions between offenders and those affected by their behaviour. This trend began with juvenile justice conferencing, family group conferencing and Indigenous sentencing circles. The umbrella term used to describe these techniques and processes is ‘restorative justice’ (‘RJ’ to its fans and practitioners).Two important catalysts for this expansion were an increased awareness of the marginalisation of victims in the criminal justice system, and concerns over climbing recidivism rates.

What makes juvenile offenders different from adult offenders?

Historically, children in criminal justice proceedings were treated much the same as adults and subject to the same criminal justice processes as adults. Until the early twentieth century, children in Australia were even subjected to the same penalties as adults, including hard labour and corporal and capital punishment (Carrington & Pereira 2009). Until the mid-nineteenth century, there was no separate category of ’juvenile offender’ in Western legal systems and children as young as six years of age were incarcerated in Australian prisons (Cunneen & White 2007). It is widely acknowledged today, however, both in Australia and internationally, that juveniles should be subject to a system of criminal justice that is separate from the adult system and that recognises their inexperience and immaturity. As such, juveniles are typically dealt with separately from adults and treated less harshly than their adult counterparts. The United Nations’ (1985: 2) Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the ‘Beijing Rules’) stress the importance of nations establishing a set of laws, rules and provisions specifically applicable to juvenile offenders and institutions and bodies entrusted with the functions of the administration of juvenile justice and designed to meet the varying needs of juvenile offenders, while protecting their basic rights. In each Australian jurisdiction, except Queensland, a juvenile is defined as a person aged between 10 and 17 years of age, inclusive. In Queensland, a juvenile is defined as a person aged between 10 and 16 years, inclusive. In all jurisdictions, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is 10 years. That is, children under 10 years of age cannot be held legally responsible for their actions.

Show me a bad kid and I’ll show you a lousy parent : making parents responsible for youth crime in Australian and Canadian Contexts

This article surveys literature bearing on the issue of parental liability and responsibility for the crimes of young offenders, with a particular focus on comparing different approaches to dealing with the issue in Australia and Canada. This comparative analysis of Australian and Canadian legislative and policy approaches is situated within a broader discussion of arguments about the “punitive turn” in youth justice, responsibilisation, and cross-jurisdictional criminal justice policy transfer and convergence. Our findings suggest that there are significant differences in the manner and extent to which Australia and Canada have invoked parental responsibility laws and policies as part of the solution to dealing with youth crime. We conclude by speculating on some of the reasons for these differences and establishing an agenda for additional needed cross-jurisdictional research. In particular, we argue that it would be fruitful to undertake a cross-jurisdictional study that examines the development and effects of parental responsibility laws across a larger number of different Western countries as well as across individual states and provinces within these national jurisdictions.