Youth Justice in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives of Youth Probation Officers

The Youth Criminal Justice Act, like its predecessor, the Young Offenders Act, incorporates philosophies, principles, and procedures from several theoretical models of youth justice. Concerns have been raised regarding how challenging it is for the various youth justice professionals responsible for implementing this law to apply it consistently across cases with varying characteristics. This article reports on a study of youth probation officers in British Columbia under the YCJA. It involves probation officers' reviewing five, actual, serious and/or violent young offender cases from across Canada. Their theoretical orientations to the different cases were derived from divergent models of youth justice. Despite the hypothesis that probation officers' responses would vary on the basis of case characteristics, overwhelming consistencies were evident in four of the five cases. The probation officers' approach typically rejected sentencing recommendations drawn from polarized models of youth justice, such as welfare or as crime control. Instead, probation officers preferred a model that represented a more eclectic approach, such as corporatist and modified justice.