THE HISTORY OF THE YOUTH COURT SINCE 1989

Part VI: CONCLUSION

Jurisdictions around the world have adopted and adapted New Zealand's youth justice experiment. Therefore it is with keen interest that these jurisdictions will look across to each other in order to repeat their successes and avoid their failures. Australia shows that funding is a pre-requisite for any successful youth justice system. Canada is currently developing the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which will replace the Young Offenders Act. This new Act will, among other things, give its Youth Justice Court the power to impose adult sentences on conviction when certain criteria are met, rather than transferring to an adult court for sentencing.[110]

Although Youth Court hearings are closed to the public the Youth Court process is not closed to the media or contained within courtroom walls. A deliberately inter-agency and familial approach has the benefit of well considered objectives, such as shifting the responsibility for the care and protection of Maori youth back to the whanau by using their own systems of whanau, hapu and iwi, minimizing youth contact with the criminal justice system, and empowering participants to formulate plans to deal with youth offending. The upshot, however, has been that the success of the Youth Court processes and the range of orders realistically available has been heavily dependent on inter-agency support, which in turn depends on resources. Cases of delays and serious youth offending show that the task of Youth Court Judges to uphold youth justice principles has not been easy, highlighting the consequences of under-funding and the need for a coordinated inter-agency approach. It seems that for serious youth offending the Youth Court is waiting to see which the direction that the Government will choose; either to devolve power to the community through developing further community based initiatives or increasingly to treat young offenders as adults.

Footnote

110 Department of Justice, Canada website <http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/dept/pub/ycja/youth.html#2-5> (at 27 August 2003).