Exploring the Utilization of Custodial Programming Among a Canadian Sample of Incarcerated Serious/Violent Young Offenders

• In Event: Adolescents' Perspectives on Crime, Justice, and Programming

Abstract

A principle of the Canadian youth criminal justice system is that youth justice sentences, including custody, should focus on the successful rehabilitation and reintegration of young people. While research has explored the use of custodial rehabilitative treatment and programs for serious/violent offenders, under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, many young offenders who have been remanded or sentenced to custody are held in detention facilities for only short periods of time. As a result, they have limited opportunities to adequately engage in any programs that are offered. To explore youth’s participation in custodial programming, as well as their reoffending outcomes, this research relies on 200 semi-structured interviews from a sample of serious/violent incarcerated young offenders in British Columbia, Canada. The presentation begins by describing the offending and risk profiles of these young offenders, followed by a review of the types of programs that youth participated in during their stay in custody. The research examines young offenders’ opinions of the programs’ helpfulness, how long they remained in the programs, and whether they would have liked to continue the programs in the community. Using bivariate and multivariate analyses, the relationship between these findings and youth’s release goals and subsequent reoffending will be assessed.

Authors

• Adrienne M.F. Peters, Simon Fraser University

• Raymond R. Corrado, Simon Fraser University