Key Findings

The State of the Criminal Justice System (SOCJS) is a national performance monitoring framework for Canada’s criminal justice system (CJS). The data from the framework are analysed and reported periodically in a SOCJS report to provide an assessment of the CJS’ performance across key indicators. This edition of the SOCJS report focuses on analyzing the performance of the youth criminal justice system and its impact on youth victims, survivors, accused and offenders, from 2017/2018 to 2021/2022.

According to the State of the Criminal Justice System’s Youth-Adapted Framework, the youth criminal justice system (CJS) is showing improvement in 7 of the 32 indicators, while 5 indicators remained stable and 3 indicators showed signs of decline. For the remaining 17 indicators, the data were too limited to establish a trend (e.g., only one year of data was available during the time period covering the report, or data are not comparable across years).

Below is a summary of the performance of the CJS by each of the nine expected outcomes in the Youth-Adapted Framework. Note that the reporting timeframe for each indicator varies based on availability of data, with some indicators having less than five years of data. For this reason, specific timeframes are indicated for each indicator.

Expected outcome 1: Canadian youth are safe and feel safe

In 2019, most Canadian youth were satisfied with their personal safety from crime.
Up until 2021, police-reported youth crime had been consistently decreasing since 2006 (shortly after the implementation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act), primarily due to the large decrease in property crime. In 2022, the police-reported youth crime rate saw an increase. Despite this increase, the police-reported youth crime rate remains lower than pre-pandemic levels.
In 2019, self-reported violent victimization was higher among youth aged 15 to 17 years old compared with those aged 35 to 39 years old, but similar to other age groups. Prevalence of victimization, especially violent victimization, was also higher among female youth than male youth.
In 2019, over two in five Canadians aged 15 and older self-reported childhood maltreatment, such as having witnessed family violence and experienced physical and sexual abuse before the age of 15. These experiences are consistently linked to increased risks of subsequent victimization.

Expected outcome 2: The youth criminal justice system is fair and accessible

In 2022, half of Canadians were moderately confident or confident that the youth CJS is fair to all people. Certain groups reported lower confidence when compared with others, including women when compared with men, Indigenous peoples when compared with White people.
Close to two-thirds of Canadians reported being moderately confident or confident that the youth CJS is accessible to all people. Indigenous peoples and Black persons reported less confidence that the youth CJS is accessible to all people compared with White people. Women also reported less confidence in this indicator compared with men. Younger Canadians (aged 18 to 44 years) reported lower confidence compared with those aged 45 and older.
Of all youth held in provincial and territorial detention between 2017/2018 and 2021/2022, over half were held in pre-trial detention. The number of youth admitted to pre-trial detention generally decreased over the five-year period, while their percentage of all youth in detention (including sentenced custody) generally remained stable, with the exception of a small increase in 2021/2022.
The number of youth clients served by the Indigenous Courtwork Program^{Footnote 1} decreased from 2017/2018 to 2019/2020.
The percentage of approved youth criminal legal aid applications has remained high over the five-year period as a result of broad eligibility criteria.

Expected outcome 3: Canadians understand the role of and express confidence in the youth criminal justice system

In 2022, Canadians, irrespective of gender, expressed a lack of awareness of the Youth Criminal Justice Act ꟷ the legislation that governs the youth CJS. This however, varied across identity group. Compared with White people:
- Indigenous peoples and Black persons were more likely to report being aware of the YCJA.
- Latinx groups were more likely to report being not aware of the YCJA.
In 2019, the majority of youth aged 15 to 17 expressed confidence in the police and the courts. Nevertheless, the vast majority of those who reported being victims did not report the incident to the police. A higher percentage of female youth reported low confidence in the criminal courts when compared with male youth.
When asked whether the prison system is doing a good job at helping prisoners become law-abiding citizens, a large percentage of youth reported being unaware.

Expected outcome 4: The youth criminal justice system operates efficiently

From 2017/2018 to 2021/2022, criminal court cases took increasingly longer to complete. Male youth cases took approximately three weeks longer to complete than female youth cases, with the exception of cases involving administration of justice offences (AOJO), where female youth cases generally took longer to complete.
Over this same time period, the number of cases in youth courts in which the most serious offence in the case was an AOJO decreased. However, the percentage made up by these cases (of all cases in youth courts) remained stable during this time.

Expected outcome 5: The youth criminal justice system promotes and supports diversion to community-based resolutions

The youth incarceration rate consistently decreased nearly by half from 2017/2018 and 2021/2022.
When looking at all youth court cases sentenced, the percentage of youth court cases receiving a non-custodial sentence increased during the same period.
The number of youth referrals to an Indigenous justice program slightly increased between 2017/2018 and 2019/2020.
Data on the annual number of referrals and participants to restorative justice programs are now available for a first year in 2019. An assessment of trends will be possible when further data are reported.

Expected outcome 6: The youth criminal justice system provides youth in the correctional system with services and supports to rehabilitate them and integrate them back into the community

The use of community supervision increased from 2017/2018 to 2021/2022.
Over the same period, the Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision (IRCS) program^{Footnote 2} continued to successfully fund treatment for all eligible cases.

Expected outcome 7: The youth criminal justice system respects victims’ and survivors’ rights and addresses their needs

Data on youth victims and survivors’ satisfaction are too unreliable to report. Looking at a broader cohort of people aged 15 to 34 years old, over half reported being satisfied with the actions taken by police.

Expected outcome 8: Reducing the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the youth criminal justice system

Indigenous youth continued to be overrepresented in the CJS as victims and survivors of crime, victims and accused of homicide, and within the correctional system.
Data on violent victimization rates of Indigenous youth are too unreliable to publish. Looking at a broader age group, Indigenous people aged 15 to 34 reported a similar rate of violent victimization as non-Indigenous people in the same age group in 2019.
In 2022, Indigenous youth were overrepresented as victims and accused of police-reported homicide, making up 2 and 6 times their representation in the Canadian youth population, respectively.
The percentage of Indigenous youth among the correctional services population remained rather stable over the five-year period, but continues to be 5 times higher than that in the Canadian youth population. When looking specifically at youth admitted to custody, the percentage of Indigenous youth is 6 times higher than that of the Canadian youth population.
Between 2017/2018 and 2021/2022, the overrepresentation of Indigenous girls in correctional services continued to be more pronounced than that of Indigenous boys (approximately 6 and 5 times their respective representation in the Canadian youth population), and even more so among custodial admissions (7 and 5.5 times their respective representation in the Canadian youth population).

Expected outcome 9: Reducing the overrepresentation of Black people in the youth criminal justice system

Data are too limited to assess national trends in the overrepresentation of Black youth in the criminal justice system, including their self-reported experiences of violent victimization.
Available data for three provincial jurisdictions show that the overrepresentation of Black youth among the provincial/territorial correctional population has remained stable between 2019/2020 and 2021/2022 (about 2 times their representation in the Canadian youth population); levels of overrepresentation are more pronounced among Black male youth than Black female youth, and more pronounced among those admitted to custody than those admitted to community supervision.

Date modified:: 2024-07-25

Language selection

Search

Phone Scam Warning