Police Decision-making with Juveniles: Which Factors Influence Officer's Propensity to Impose Extrajudicial Measures?

• In Event: Youth Professionals: Working within Structured Spaces

Abstract

On April 3rd 2003, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), the Canadian juvenile delinquency legislation, provided police officers with new tools to divert juvenile offenders from the formal justice system. Henceforth, police officers can officially impose extrajudicial measures - either formal warnings or referrals to community programs - to juvenile delinquents instead of handing them directly to the justice system. The current study seeks to determine which characteristics of the offenders and circumstances of the offences significantly impact the decisions of officers to divert cases instead of sending them to the formal justice system. The results are based on a sample of juvenile offences (n= 13,686) recorded by a Canadian police force between 2003 and 2010, which are divided into three sub-samples: violent offences (n= 3,482), propriety offences (n= 8,230) and other offences (n= 1,974). Multilevel logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine which factors - for example, gender, age, and criminal record of the offender as well as location in time and space of the offence - have a significant impact on police decision-making. Although some factors have similar significant impacts regardless of offence type, others have a differential influence depending on the type of crime that was committed.

Authors

• Camille Faubert, Université de Montréal

• Remi Boivin, Université de Montréal