Are youth offenders responsive to changing sanctions? Evidence from the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2003

Abstract

This paper examines youth offenders’ responses to changing sanctions, using evidence from the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which replaced the Young Offenders Act on April 1, 2003. Using police reported and court based official statistics and the difference‐in‐difference strategy, it is found that Canadian youth offenders were less likely to be charged by police and less likely to receive a custodial sentence following the YCJA. These changes were relatively large for less serious crime and small or insignificant for more serious crime. In response to these changes in the certainty of sanctions, less serious youth crime increased while the direction of change for more serious youth crime was less clear. Empirical analysis on youth self‐reported crime corroborates the findings on youth crime reported to police, particularly for boys.