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CHAPTER 6 - ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL
CRIMINAL JUSTICE APPROACHES

Advocates for alternatives to the traditional youth justice system are cognizant of the considerable limitations of that system in reducing reoffence rates. As well, they are aware that minor, temporary offending behaviour among adolescents is common, that few young offenders advance to serious and persistent offending behaviour, and, that a custodial disposition exposes youth daily to other antisocial youth. They are united in their belief that formal judicial proceedings should be reserved for violent offenders who are a threat to public safety.

POLICE DISCRETION: WARNINGS

In light of our knowledge of the costs of the youth justice system, the limited deterrent effect of criminal sanctions, the temporary nature of most youth offending behaviour, and the relatively minor nature of much youth crime, witnesses highlighted the importance of police diversion in reducing the numbers appearing in youth court. A young person who is caught engaging in minor offending behaviour and brought home to his or her parents and/or given a warning by a police officer, often requires no further action to be convinced to abide by the law. This street-level decision-making by police acts as a filter to screen non-serious or trivial cases out of the justice system. Although police have always exercised discretion with respect to offending behaviour of youth, the Committee was told of research that found the use of police discretion in deciding not to charge had decreased over the last decade in Canada.

POLICE DISCRETION: CAUTIONING

Most states in Australia have used police cautioning for 15 years or longer. It involves a more formal front-line diversion procedure than a mere police warning. The young offender, in the presence of his or her parents, is cautioned by a designated police officer at the police station. Cautioning is contingent upon the youth's admitting to having committed the offence and both the offender and his/her parents must be aware that they have the choice of going to court. Police cautioning involves a discussion of the circumstances surrounding the crime, the impact the offence has had on the victim and the implications of offending behaviour for the offender. If appropriate, a mechanism is in place whereby the offender can formally apologize to the victim. Restitution to the victim, while not ruled out, is not a requirement of cautioning process. Recognizing that there may be any number of social issues underlying the offending behaviour, the police have formed partnerships with agencies in the community and, when appropriate, they refer youth and their families to the community resources.

Research findings demonstrate that the cautioning process is an effective alternative to formal charging and prosecution:30

According to some witnesses before the Committee, police forces should encourage the use of street-level police discretion and national guidelines should be developed by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association setting out when not to charge a young person and the range of possible non-criminal justice responses police officers may consider (e.g. warning, cautioning, etc.).

ALTERNATIVE MEASURES

Section 4 of the Young Offenders Act sets out the legal framework for the development and implementation of community-based alternative measures programs. Such programs include pre- and post-charge alternative responses to traditional prosecution and are intended for non-serious offences. They are intended to be more structured than a police warning and less formal than judicial processing. Examples of alternative measures include an apology, community service and restitution. To be considered for an alternative measures program, among other things, the youth must accept responsibility for the criminal act in question.

All provinces and the two territories have alternative measures programs in place for dealing with young offenders; however, data are scarce on the number of youths who are referred to these programs. Professor Doob notes in his report prepared for the Department of Justice for this Committee's Young Offenders Act review that alternative measures "programs vary considerably in the manner in which they are administered, the criteria that are used for entry into the program, and the stage of the proceedings at which they take place."31

In its cross-country consultations, the Youth Justice Committee of the National Crime Prevention Council was told that alternative measures are not being used widely in most jurisdictions of the country.32 This was confirmed by the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, which, in its brief, stated:

There is public support for alternative measures programs for non-serious, non-violent offences. The problem lies not in the idea, but in its implementation. Programs cost money, and so far little has been put into them. Without meaningful programs, the effectiveness is lost. Currently, about one-third of all young offenders are sentenced to some kind of custody (either open or closed) and many judges express frustration over a lack of alternatives.
The one notable exception is the province of Quebec. Claude Boies, of the Quebec Bar, informed the Committee that in 1993 nearly 50% of the young offender case files submitted to Quebec's Attorney General were referred to the provincial director for alternative measures. He added:

These measures cover things such as reimbursing victims, meeting to improve the young person's social skills, and community works. With these types of measures, we do much more than simply making the young person accountable for his actions; we also get the community involved, we develop certain skills, we work on the young person's self-esteem and socialization. (41:47)
A number of witnesses before the Committee pointed to the police diversion and alternative measures system in Quebec as a model for the rest of the country. Compared to other provinces, the Committee learned, Quebec diverts more young people with less serious offences from the formal youth justice system; it consequently processes fewer young people through the youth court and has the lowest rate of young persons sentenced to custody. Indeed, provincial disparities in the use of diversion and alternative measures have resulted in an enormous variation in the rate at which youth are processed by the youth courts and sentenced to custody in this country.

In his written submission to this Committee, Professor Doob presented data showing the interprovincial differences in the use of the youth justice system. Using youth court statistics (1993-94) for the provinces of Quebec, British Columbia, Ontario and Saskatchewan, he shows that Ontario and Saskatchewan bring dramatically more youth cases to court, find more youth guilty of offences and put more of them into custody than do the provinces of British Columbia and Quebec. It is unlikely that this variation reflects differences in the behaviour of young people in these provinces, Doob argues. In fact, there is no evidence to suggest that young offender-aged youth in Quebec and British Columbia are more law abiding than their counterparts in Ontario and Saskatchewan. Rather, these findings are attributed to disparities between the provinces in the use of more informal or community-oriented approaches, including police diversion/cautioning and pre- and post-charge alternative measures, for minor offences committed by youth.

A number of witnesses pointed out that Canada's excessive reliance on the formal youth justice system for dealing with minor offences is evidence of the underutilization of police discretion and alternative measures diversion programs in most of this country. In his brief to the Committee, Judge Lilles of the Yukon Territorial Court described the characteristics of over a third of the cases processed annually in youth court:

Annually, our youth courts process over forty thousand cases of theft where the value of the goods taken was less than a thousand dollars (called `theft under'), of which shoplifting is the most common, and another ten thousand cases where the charge was merely mischief. These two categories of cases alone represent about thirty-five per cent of the Young Offenders Act caseload nationwide. Almost none of these young people could be categorized as dangerous.33
In its brief, the National Crime Prevention Council's comprehensive recommendations on the importance of alternative measures capture what theCommittee heard from coast to coast:

. . . for young people who have offended for the first time, (where the offence does not involve serious violence), or who have committed more than one minor offence, a wide range of pre-charge and post-charge alternatives should be explored by justice officials with individual communities. The range of options can include such approaches as: family group conferencing; youth justice committees; circle sentencing; work apprenticeship programs; alternative education programs; and a wide range of community-based diversion and prevention programs. . .

ALTERNATIVE JUSTICE MEASURES INVOLVING VICTIMS

Formal interventions in the youth justice system, the Committee heard, are expensive, treat victims as evidence, do not allow for the full participation of victims or the young offender's family and often fail to hold offenders truly accountable for their behaviour. Witnesses called for innovative, community-based responses to resolve what are essentially community problems. In their speaking notes for their presentation to the Committee, the Church Council on Justice and Corrections aptly articulated this appeal:

And so the Church Council has come to the conclusion that the only way we can break out of the current impasse in order to develop some more effective approaches to youth justice is to encourage experimentation with processes in which community members can start to participate, to have a say in what is done, so that the whole variety of objectives for victim, offender and communities can be seen to be addressed.
The Committee heard about a number of emerging alternatives to traditional youth court processing which emphasize informal responses, victim involvement and community responsibility for public safety and justice. Referred to as restorative or reintegrative justice, these alternative approaches include police cautioning (described above), family group conferencing and circle sentencing. In his brief to the Committee, which was subsequently published as an article in the journal Australian-Canadian Studies, Judge Lilles provides a detailed description of police cautioning and family group conferences. Much of the preceding information on police cautioning and what follows on conferencing is derived from Judge Lilles' work.34

FAMILY GROUP CONFERENCING

In family group conferences the offender, his or her family, the victim, and the victim's supporters are brought together in an informal setting. The intent is to overcome some of the limitations associated with the present system, including the exclusion of crime victims and the offender's family from judicial proceedings.

The New Zealand approach highlights the responsibility of the family in the young person's life and assists both immediate and extended family members to manage their young people. The Conference is chaired by a Youth Justice Coordinator rather than a judge and, unlike youth courts, a Family Group Conference (FGC) gives those affected by the crime - the offender, his or her family members and the victim - the responsibility to reach a resolution in a supportive environment.

Almost all young offender cases in New Zealand are dealt with by FGC; the majority of cases involve a young person who has been identified by police as a suspect and who, pre-charge, has admitted to committing the offence in question. All youth have the option to have the matter dealt with in youth court. At the Conference, the young person is encouraged to speak openly about his or her responsibility for the offence and the victim is given the opportunity to confront the offender and articulate the full, personal impact that the crime has had on him or her. Outcomes or resolutions - an apology, restitution to the victim, community service work or a combination of the three - are arrived at through a negotiated agreement between all participants in the conference. The young person's family's participation is intended to foster an understanding of the factors associated with the offence and what is required to help keep the young person from reoffending.

Family group conferences have demonstrably reduced custodial rates, court appearances and budgets in New Zealand. Over 4,000 youth were in custody in New Zealand in 1986 at a cost of $206 million; in 1991, this number had been reduced to under 1,000 at a cost of $113 million. As well, the number of youth appearing in court decreased from between 10,000 and 13,000 to 1,800 in 1993. Evaluation research found 91% of police, 85% of parents and youth, and 48% of victims were satisfied with the outcome of the Conference. Judge Lilles cautions that, while there are some criticisms and limitations of FGC that can and should be addressed, these problems "should not be considered in isolation, but in the context of the formal court alternative. In that light, the FGC must be judged far superior as far as police, offender, family and even victim satisfaction is concerned."

In promoting the positive aspects of family group conferences, the Church Council on Justice and Corrections, in its speaking notes, aptly describes the negative aspects of the current system for youth in conflict with the law.

In a way, conferences are a form of diversion but yet they are so much more than diversion. Like other types of diversion, they avoid the negative aspects of the court process. The court system treats primary victims merely as evidence, ignores most other parties affected by the incident, focuses on legal culpability and mutes the role of community members affected by the crime. The adversarial nature of the system inverses the whole reintegrative process, by gathering together those people who can inflict maximum damage on the other side.
In 1991, the community of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia, introduced the New Zealand FGC model. At the time the community was experiencing high rates of crime and the police did not find the available options for dealing with young offenders effective. For some youth, a simple warning did not hold them accountable, foster an appreciation of the consequences of offending behaviour or assist victims. The courts failed to deliver meaningful sanctions, take into consideration victims' needs or involve parents in the rehabilitation of their youth. In the state of New South Wales, 80% of youth apprehended by the police were prosecuted through the courts.

Wagga Wagga's family conference model is operated by the police department as part of its police cautioning program. In most other respects it is modelled on the New Zealand's FGC. The Conference is a forum designed to hold the youth responsible for his or her offending behaviour, encourage victim participation, and promote family and community responsibility. Preliminary evaluation results show that during the program's first two years the percentage of cases going to court decreased from 62% to 48% and the participation and satisfaction of crime victims was high. Moreover, 93% of the agreements to compensate victims were honoured.

On this continent, in a small community in British Columbia, RCMP Sergeant Jake Bouwman learned of family group conferencing from reading Judge Lilles' published paper on the subject. According to Sergeant Bouwman, at the time he became aware of this alternative measure, he was frustrated with the youth justice system's lengthy delays between the time an offence occurred and the matter was concluded in youth court, its enormous costs (in British Columbia it costs $800 an hour to run a courtroom), its exclusion of victims from the process, and its failure to curb reoffending.

In response and in order to expand the range of options available to police in their dealings with youth in conflict with the law, Sergeant Bouwman, along with local defence lawyer Glen Purdy, founded the Sparwood Youth Assistance Program in 1995. It is modelled on the Wagga Wagga program with one exception; the Sparwood program is run by volunteer facilitators who are not connected to the police force.

The Sparwood Youth Assistance Program is an example of an innovative, community-based justice alternative. Crimes are dealt with without laying charges, the setting is informal, both the victim and the offender are involved in coming to a resolution, and the offender is not sentenced to custody. Mr. Purdy and Sergeant Bouwman explained to the Committee how the Sparwood program operates.

When a youth has been identified by police as a suspect in an offence other than homicide, armed robbery or serious sexual assault, he or she is given the choice of participating in the program in which a resolution will be sought. Participants must agree to the following conditions: admit to the offence and provide police with all the relevant details surrounding the crime; attend a "resolution conference" with his or her support people (e.g. parent(s), relatives, siblings, teachers); and comply with whatever resolution is reached with the victim. If the youth agrees to the program conditions, the involvement and support of the victim is sought. Victims are also encouraged to bring support people with them to the resolution conference. Of note, Crown counsel are supportive of this pre-charge diversion program which accepts first-time young offenders who have committed a range of crimes including property offences, assaults, assaults causing bodily harm, break and enters and minor sexual assaults, as well as repeat young offenders who have not been rehabilitated by the traditional youth justice system.

One of the two volunteer facilitators from the community arranges a convenient date and time for the conference to take place. At the conference, which is held within 10- days to two-weeks of the time the suspect is identified, the facilitator prompts the youth to talk about the circumstances surrounding the offence and who was affected by the crime. The victim then confirms the facts and describes to the offender the impact of the crime on him or her. With their respective support groups, the victim and the offender are asked to come up with a resolution to the crime. The resolution must include full compensation to the victim and facilitate the offender's reintegration into the community by having him or her work for the victim or do community service work. Both Sergeant Bouwman and Glen Purdy believe that through the resolution conference the youth sees the connection between the offending behaviour, the impact of that behaviour on the victim and his or her family, and the "punishment" or resolution that follows.

The young person, once he [sic] has admitted and has been shamed for what he has done - and his head really hangs down once the victim has vented at him - is given the chance to make good to the victim. . . he now has a face to what he has done and who he has done it to. (66:33)
Contrary to the view of sceptics who regard anything less than denunciation and punishment by the courts as "going soft on crime," this positive alternative to the youth justice system holds youth accountable for their behaviour while acknowledging and repairing the harm caused by the crime to the victim and the community.

The Committee is impressed with the outcomes of the Sparwood Program. Sergeant Bouwman reported that, since the implementation of the program, 65 youth have been dealt with through the resolution conference and no youths who reside in Sparwood or the surrounding communities have gone to youth court, dramatically reducing the RCMP's court-based workload. It was estimated that the program has saved $100,000 in court time although none of the money has been returned to the community.

In 22 months, the community had a re-offence rate of 9% (the annual national re-offence rate in Canada is 40%); not one offender has failed to comply with the resolution. On average, the time from the date of the offence to the conclusion of the resolution has been 74 days. Victims' needs for recognition of the harm done to them, support and reparation are met generally through the program; thus, victim satisfaction has been found to be high. Sergeant Bouwman told the Committee:

We do a victim satisfaction report. . . we have had a 95% satisfaction rate. . . which does two things: it immediately makes the victim satisfied, and secondly, the victim now becomes more cognizant of what is happening in the community and becomes very supportive of initiatives and also of the policemen [sic] themselves. It's a win-win situation for me and my detachment and for the community as a whole. (66:35)
If a victim does not wish to have the offender work directly for him or her, the program has partnerships with community organizations and businesses (service clubs, the municipality, campground, etc.) where young offenders are given work assignments and supervised. The success of the Sparwood program, in the view of its founders, rests with the support it receives from the community.

The community is involved. . . We provide the vehicle. We do very little. . . We strongly believe the solution to youth crime is in the community. Give the community the ability to deal with it and they will. (66:39)
At the National Forum, among the invited participants were Sergeant Bouwman and Neil Sharkey, a lawyer with Maliiganik Tukisiiniakvik, a legal aid clinic in Iqaluit. The Committee was pleased to read in a December 1996 article in the Iqaluit-based Nunatsiaq News that the RCMP in Iqaluit have come to embrace recently the concept of family group conferencing as a means of keeping youth out of the youth justice system and reducing recidivism. It appears from the article that Sergeant Bouwman of the Sparwood Youth Assistance Program was a catalyst for the decision to introduce conferencing to the region. He is quoted as describing his experience with the family group conferencing program for young offenders that he started in British Columbia. Also quoted is Neil Sharkey, indicating his support for the initiative.

The Committee believes that family group conferencing addresses many problems of the youth justice system. This alternative justice program allows for the involvement of victims and includes compensation to victims, fosters a reconciliation between the offender and the victim, and instils in young people a sense of personal and social responsibility. It has a greater educational impact than increasing punishment, which, as the research shows, has little dissuasive effect.

CIRCLE/COMMUNITY SENTENCING

Another criminal justice innovation post-court processing and post-conviction is circle sentencing, in which community members are brought together to determine collectively the sentence of a convicted person from the same community. To date, almost all sentencing circles have been conducted in aboriginal communities. Typically, the sentencing circle includes the offender and his or her family and other supporters, the victim and the victim's supporters, individuals involved in the administration of justice (including a judge, Crown prosecutor, defence lawyer and court workers), and representatives from community agencies such as youth, mental health and social workers. The intent of the circle is to have an open discussion about the facts of the offence and its impact on the victim and the community and to reach a collective decision on an appropriate sentence to recommend to the judge.

Sentencing circles are seen to be an innovative response to the overrepresentation of native people in the criminal courts and custodial facilities in Canada. During its travels in northern and western parts of the country, the Committee heard the following statistics:

Fully 70% of youth in custody in Whitehorse at any given time are first nations youth. The first nations community comprises slightly over 20% of the overall population of the Yukon. (Chief Shirley Adamson of the Council of Yukon First Nations, 63:16)
Right now in Alberta, 87% of those incarcerated under the age of 15 are aboriginal. Of the total [incarcerated young offenders], 65% are aboriginal. (Jim Robb of the Legal Aid Office, Edmonton, Alberta, 79:9)
If you go to a territorial court, a youth court in particular, about 90% to 100% of people before the court are aboriginal. (Shannon Cumming, Special Projects Coordinator of the Metis Nation, NWT (48:7)
Some of the stated objectives of sentencing circles are: to promote alternatives to custody, reduce reoffending rates, prevent crime, hold offenders accountable for their behaviour, provide victims with a role in the criminal justice process, and promote community healing. Emphasis is placed on rehabilitation and reintegration of the offender into the community. To date, no scientific evaluations of sentencing circles have been conducted to determine whether they are more effective than the current sentencing system.

Notwithstanding this fact, the Committee was fortunate to have the opportunity to sit in on a sentence "review" circle in Whitehorse. The offender was brought back before the circle that had sentenced him in order to provide a report on his progress in the community. In addition to the offender, each of the 20 to 30 members of the circle, including family, the young man's social worker and counsellor, community elders, the prosecutor and judge spoke in the circle. It was a powerful and moving display of the community's concern for the young man and of its willingness to support him in his rehabilitation. It was clear that the need for healing extended beyond the offender to other members of his family and his community. The circle members spoke of social, family, substance abuse, and violence issues as they related to the offender's crime and to community-wide problems. In doing so, they highlighted the well-known fact that the preponderance of factors associated with crime are non-legal. And the circle sentencing process demonstrated that community-based solutions to tackle these problems are required to prevent offending, reduce reoffending rates and ultimately to foster safe and healthy communities.

Jeannette Schmid of Rittenhouse, a social justice organization, summarized the advantages of alternative justice approaches for victims, offenders and the community:

. . . [T]he victim has an opportunity to. . . ask all those questions one has about an offence: what happened, why me, why at that time? They also get recognition for the severity of the trauma they have experienced. . . There's an opportunity for reparation. . . The victim is also able to get a sense of safety again. . . Finally, what victims really very often need is a sense of significance - that in some way this pain they've had to experience has some meaning.
. . . The most important thing is that the young person is able to be accountable for what has happened. . . They often lose sight of the impact they have had on the people they have hurt. This way they see the victim. They hear the story from the victim on what this crime has meant to the victim. . . There's an opportunity to make reparation. Again, punishing often doesn't give the offender the opportunity to make right.
. . . Because community members are involved in the process, it often empowers people. We've learned that if we have problems with other people, very often now we call the police. We've lost the skills of settling problems with other people. . .We don't know to resolve tensions, how to problem solve. This allows community members to regain power, to learn how to settle differences without calling the authorities. (25:13-14)
This latter point about the importance and benefits of empowering communities was made by Patty Ann LaBouchane of Native Counselling Services in Edmonton:

. . .when people are yelling for tougher sentences. . .what they're talking about is they want to feel safe. . . they don't feel like they have any control over their environment and they feel like they can protect their children. By empowering communities we can address this. (49:65)
Based on the foregoing, the Committee believes that priority should be given to community-based responses and sanctions. It has been demonstrated that formal court alternatives can and do hold youth accountable and, unlike a custodial sentence, support and affirm the responsibility of parents, encourage the involvement of victims and the community, and allow for reparation.

RECOMMENDATION 7

The Committee recommends that the youth justice system be reformed to accommodate alternatives to it that are described in this report such as police cautioning, family group conferencing and circle sentencing, and, if necessary, that the Young Offenders Act be amended to ensure that these reforms are put in place.

YOUTH JUSTICE COMMITTEES

Section 69 of the Young Offenders Act allows provincial Attorneys General to appoint Youth Justice Committees composed of citizens who serve without remuneration and assist in any aspect of the administration of the Act, or of programs and services for young offenders. This is the extent of the legislative guidance given by Parliament.

In contrast, the former Act, the Juvenile Delinquents Act required that Juvenile Court Committees be appointed that included representatives of Children's Aid Societies, and majority and minority religious groups. These committees were given specific obligations to consult with probation services on the "reformation" of young offenders.

The contrast between the definition of the roles of the two committees is obvious. Under the former Act, there were many ties between the child welfare/youth protection and the youth criminal justice systems; this was manifested in part by the make-up and duties of the Juvenile Court Committees. When the present Act was adopted, Parliament dismantled many of the links between these two systems, replacing them by a youth justice system based on a mixed crime control/due process model. Youth Justice Committees, as at present defined, are an attempt to bridge the gap between the two systems in some ways.

Youth Justice Committees can be found in some provinces and territories. Many aboriginal communities make use of Justice Committees, healing circles and sentencing circles, in working with both adult and young offenders. In many parts of Canada, community-based efforts at family group conferencing and victim/offender mediation/reconciliation are used to deal with instances of both adult and youth offending. These efforts, which are described elsewhere in this Report, are community-based, involve victims and offenders, and their families and supporters, are culturally sensitive, and often contain elements of restitution or compensation. These approaches are usually successful at keeping young people out of the youth justice system and at reducing the rates of recidivism. The Committee was impressed not only at the effectiveness of these strategies themselves, but also by the commitment of those involved in them, who give enormously of their time and effort.

These strategies have largely grown up on their own, often as responses to local community circumstances. They should be copied and reinforced all across the country in ways sensitive to community needs. They are examples of the approaches favoured by the Committee - community-based, early interventionist and largely outside the youth justice system.

The Committee was often told by those within and outside the youth justice system, of inadequate levels of coordination and integration of services and programs, both within the youth justice system itself, and between it and the child welfare/youth protection, mental health and education systems. As a result, people fall through the gaps, either because the services and programs do not exist, or they do exist but are not well known or are not accessible. This situation can not be allowed to persist - there must be more coordination at the local and community level to meet the needs of offending youth.

The Committee was particularly impressed by the Quebec approach to this challenge. That province has institutionally established a link between the child welfare/youth protection system and the youth justice system by having the same person play the roles of Provincial Director under the Young Offenders Act and Director of Youth Protection under the Youth Protection Act. This arrangement is mirrored at all levels of both systems, since they share premises, services, programs and personnel. When a young person gets into difficulty, it can be determined which of the two approaches is more appropriate. In addition to these arrangements, Quebec also has an intensive alternative measures scheme which is considered in relation to all but the most serious instances of youth offending. The consequence to this is that that province has a low level of court processing of young offenders.

These issues have been raised in the context of Youth Justice Committees both to demonstrate their importance to effecting reductions in youth offending and the inadequacy of the present legislative basis set out by Parliament.

Youth Justice Committees should be at the core of a renewed youth justice system. Properly developed, they can play several roles; they can be a source for the coordination and integration of the different components of the youth justice system and can also provide links between it and the child welfare/youth protection, mental health and education systems. This can be achieved by ensuring that these systems are represented on the Committees. Others who should also be present are parents, young people, community leaders, and representatives of recreational and non-governmental organizations.

Youth Justice Committees could take on responsibility for community-based alternative measures programs. Their members could be drawn upon to participate in possible family group conferencing efforts and in healing circles, community sentencing or sentencing circles, if those options were made available.

No single Youth Justice Committee model will satisfy the needs of all communities; local choices should be based on geography, language, culture, youth offending patterns, etc. These Committees must be given a new prominence as a centrepiece in a renewed approach to the youth justice system that builds upon and expands current efforts in many parts of this country. The Young Offenders Act has to be amended accordingly, with any such amendment given a prominent place at the front of the Act, immediately following the new statement of purpose and enunciation of guiding principles recommended elsewhere in this Report.

RECOMMENDATION 8

The Committee recommends that the current provision in the Young Offenders Act (Section 69) dealing with youth justice committees be strengthened considerably to reflect the prominence this institution should play in a renewed youth justice system. There should be enough built-in flexibility in any renewed legislative provision to allow communities to determine the role to be played by these committees in relation to the coordination and delivery of services to young people. Any such amendment to the Act should immediately follow other recommended amendments setting out a new statement of purpose for the Act and enunciation of its guiding principles.

30 Lilles (1995), p. 86-89.

31 Doob (1995), p. 95.

32 National Crime Prevention Council, "Brief to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs Conducting the Comprehensive Review of the Young Offenders Act," December 1995, p. 5.

33 Lilles (1995), p. 85-86.

34 Lilles (1995).

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