From knowledge to action? The Youth Criminal Justice Act and use of extrajudicial measures in youth policing

Since its implementation, several studies have asserted that the Youth Criminal Justice Act [YCJA] (2003) has been successful in lessening the number of Canadian youth sent to court and later incarcerated. However, earlier work has not addressed the limitations of the YCJA in provinces where its provisions have only been partially implemented due to limited resources. Analyses of quantitative data derived from a survey of police officers in an Atlantic province reveals that knowledge of the YCJA and YCJA procedures is a poor predictor of officers’ likelihood to use extrajudicial (diversion) measures. Analysis of the open-ended portion of our survey, however, provides an explanation: the Act has not been fully implemented here because of resource limitations, which affect an officer’s ability to adhere to the YCJA.