Juvenile injustice? Why Australia needs to change the way it holds young people to account for their actions (original) (raw)
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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
Punishment & Society, 2021
Youth and crime, as well as how children in conflict with the law are treated within the youth justice system, has always been an important area of criminological research. Yet, penality as the 'whole system of punishment, ranging from its philosophies, laws, and methods, to its material effects and the wider social, cultural, and political environments in which it is located' (p. 1) has rarely been interrogated holistically in reference to young people. This book rectifies the lack of attention on penality in relation to young people. It compares the similarities and differences between four Australian states and England and Wales, with special emphasis on locality and the sub-national reasons for convergences and divisions between the two jurisdictions. The book emphasises how, in the Western liberal-democratic nations of England and Wales and Australia, illiberal and undemocratic penal practices against children are negotiated on the ground when criminal laws and youth justice policies clash with organisational discourses and institutional working practices, yielding discriminatory treatment of structurally marginalised young people that McAra and McVie (2005) have, albeit in another context, called the 'usual suspects'. The book outlines and explains current manifestations of such processes, including the racialised practices of stop and search, arrest, detention and police custody, restrictions of freedom of movement and association, court proceedings, and penal detention as employed against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia, and Black young people in the UK. Chapter 1 sets the scene for the book by providing an overview of the inter-and intrajurisdictional similarities and differences between England and Wales and four Australian states from the early 1980s to the present. The chapter touches upon the injustices of youth justice in the two jurisdictional contexts, focusing on the disproportionate treatment of minority ethnic children, girls and young women, welfare-involved youth, young people with neuro-developmental disabilities and mental health disorders, and other
Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 2013
The law has long since recognized that there are many young people who ''come of age'' and are due to have their sentences transferred to the adult system at age 18, but who may not be able to withstand incarceration for a number of reasons. Specifically, in New South Wales, s19(3) of the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 recognizes that a young person under the age of 21 may be able to serve some or all of their term of imprisonment as a juvenile offender if the young person is deemed to meet criteria of ''special circumstances''. Section 19(4) specifies those circumstances as illness or disability, access to educational, vocational and therapeutic programmes and the risk of psychological or physical risk of harm. The underlying principle in this regard is that juveniles are typically at a different developmental stage from adults and have unique levels of need as compared with adult offenders. Thus, juveniles are considered to be potentially subject to a number of factors related to ''vulnerability'' that may invoke consideration of s19.