This is Christy and welcome to the Canadian True Crime podcast, Episode 5, Young Offenders Part 1.

This podcast contains coarse language, adult themes, and content of a violent and disturbing nature.

Listener discretion is advised. I think this episode needs an additional warning,

as it does discuss murders of children perpetrated by teenagers,

and one of them has a sexual component.

I don't like to go into gratuitous detail unless it's pertinent to the story of catching the perpetrator, but still, if you don't feel like you're up to listening to this, I completely understand.

Before I get to it, I wanted to tell you that I'll be on vacation for two weeks until the Easter weekend, so there will be a bit of a delay getting the next

episode out. But as soon as I get back, I will be continuing on with the next episode.

This episode is about young offenders in Canada and how two of them in particular were connected

to the Young Offenders Act.

Canada has a history of disagreements on how the criminal system treats young offenders,

with controversy centering on what the best approaches and also the severity of punishment.

At a very high level, before 1908, Canadian children in conflict with the law were treated as if they were adults,

often receiving harsh sentences for relatively minor crimes.

They were also frequently detained with adults while awaiting trial and sentenced to adult prisons.

In 1908, the Juvenile Delinquents Act came into force,

establishing a separate justice system for youth with separate courts. The National Age of

Criminal Responsibility was age seven. The act was described as a social welfare approach

to dealing with young offenders, with judges focusing on reform,

not punishment. The Juvenile Delinquents Act didn't allow young people to have legal representation,

and once the court decided that the youth was a juvenile delinquent, they could order them to an

institution or training school until the authorities felt they were okay to be

...