Douglas College and the New Westminster Museum collaborated to host the Tick-Talk: Crime and Consequences Student Conference, which featured criminology students' presentations on a variety of crime, justice, and social issues. Adopting a fast-paced presentation format, students raised key issues and challenges, described personal experiences, and disseminated unique ideas in a public forum. Presentation topics included the right to legal representation, the over representation of Indigenous peoples in Canada’s criminal justice system, youth justice policy, and connections between mental health and criminal justice. The conference also included several discussion sessions that generated valuable dialogue among students, academics, practitioners, and members of the public. --- Crime committed by young women has been increasing over the past several decades and researchers have few answers as to why. What is known about female offenders is that the vast majority of young women entering the criminal justice system have experienced sexual, physical and drug abuse, and mental illness. Rachelle Younie discussed the use of non-profit after-school programs, including their role in decreasing crime rates and their cost-effectiveness, as well as the harms of prison environments, including worsening mental health, increasing gang involvement and removing youth from prosocial connections. Criminal behaviour is a product of a number of sociological, psychological and economic disadvantages. Young women need positive resources to repair the underlying issues that led to their criminality, not to be punished for their upbringings.
Female juvenile crime is on the rise. In response, some agencies are suggesting a remedy to revise the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act in favour of harsher sentences for youth. This paper delves into the potential negative repercussions of said amendment such as increased involvement in gangs and deteriorating mental health. Furthermore, alternative methods such as after school programs, mentorships, and therapeutic means of rehabilitation are shown to not only be more effective for reducing crime among young women but more cost effective as well. Prisons have been shown to worsen the situations of young women who have grown up in extremely disadvantageous circumstances. Thus, this paper argues that harsher sentences for female youth will not only be ineffective in solving the current problem of youth crime but may make it worse. Andrew A. Reid and Beth de Beer (Faculty sponsors).
One of the underlying foundations of Western criminal justice is the notion that human behavior is the product of rational choice. The creation of separate justice systems for juveniles and adults is based on the idea that fundamental differences in rationality exist between these two groups. Since its inception, the establishment of upper and lower boundaries demarking the juvenile justice system has been a highly contentious issue, both scientifically and politically. Critically, this debate stems from the largely arbitrary nature of the boundaries. Over the last thirty years a sufficiently large body of psychological and neurological empirical work has examined the development of decision-making and rational choice in late childhood, adolescents, and adulthood. The current article discusses the implications of this research on the establishment of upper and lower age jurisdictions for the juvenile justice system, as well as how adolescent decision-making influences other key aspects of the justice process such as competency to stand trial.
