Teaching Youth Justice

Rationale
This lesson is a direct continuation of Lesson 1.4. It explains a more formal type of extrajudicial measure for more serious offences: an extrajudicial sanction. Extrajudicial sanctions are another way for crime to be dealt with in the community as opposed to laying a charge and moving the process to Youth Justice Court.

Procedure
1. Brainstorm a list of possible crimes. Sort the crimes by their seriousness. Then ask students to consider what offences might be too serious to be dealt with by way of a warning, caution, or referral.

2. Distribute Extrajudicial Sanctions and read as a class. It may be a good idea to break students into discussion groups to address the corresponding questions.

3. As a summary of the reading, ask students to imagine that a youth successfully completes the requirements of an extrajudicial sanction (this could include such things as restitution or compensation, personal service work for the victim, community service work, mediation, counselling, and treatment programs). Two years go by without any further trouble with the law. The youth now has no record in relation to this incident.
KEY QUESTIONS:

• Is this fair?
• What purpose does closing the record serve?
• Does this concept fit with the idea of the age of criminal responsibility (Lesson 1.1)?