 Are youth offenders responsive to changing sanctions? Evidence from the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2003Lihui Zhang Canadian Journal of Economics, 2016, vol. 49, issue 2, 515-554 Abstract: This paper examines youth offenders responses to changing sanctions, using evidence from the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which replaced the Young Offenders Act on April 1, 2003. Using police reported and court based official statistics and the difference-in-difference strategy, it is found that Canadian youth offenders were less likely to be charged by police and less likely to receive a custodial sentence following the YCJA. These changes were relatively large for less serious crime and small or insignificant for more serious crime. In response to these changes in the certainty of sanctions, less serious youth crime increased while the direction of change for more serious youth crime was less clear. Empirical analysis on youth self-reported crime corroborates the findings on youth crime reported to police, particularly for boys. JEL-codes: J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cje:issued:v:49:y:2016:i:2:p:515-554 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Canadian Journal of Economics is currently edited by Zhiqi Chen More articles in Canadian Journal of Economics from Canadian Economics Association Canadian Economics Association Prof. Werrner Antweiler, Treasurer UBC Sauder School of Business 2053 Main Mall Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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