"A chance to make good" : juvenile males and the law in Vancouver, B.C., 1910-1915
Creators: name: Matters, Diane Louise Janowski
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: The federal Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908 confirmed and expanded upon an inferior civil status for Canadian children and young people. Using the vehicle of a special children's court designed to protect its clientele with such innovations as private hearings and informal evidence, legislators denied the benefit of traditional legal protections to children. The rationale for these changes was the assumption that wayward children were incontrovertibly criminalized by contact with the regular court system and with adult offenders. Proponents of the new juvenile court system believed that a paternalistic probation officer who kept a close watch on the child and its family would provide an effective alternative to the cycle whereby juvenile offenders became irreversibly committed adult offenders. This thesis examines the day-to-day operations of the Vancouver Juvenile Court, one of the pioneer Canadian children's courts, with a view to testing some of these premises. Files were compiled on all juvenile males who came before the court during its first five years of operation. A computer analysis was made of the cases to determine how different variables, such as the child's home situation and who initiated his initial contact with the court affected handling of the cases. It was found that the Vancouver Court did not function as its promoters had intended. Children were still frequently picked up by police and held in regular police cells for varying lengths of time. They were subjected, further, to frequent and lengthy periods of detention in the Court's Detention Home. Instead of being the subjects of an exhaustive examination by a fatherly judge, their cases were decided, occasionally over the telephone and usually after only the most cursory consideration, by a police magistrate after his other duties were completed. Almost all male offenders who came into contact with the Court were formally charged. Of these, fewer than half were brought back for a subsequent offence. Most of those who did return to Court on one or more new charges were brought in for either the same or lesser orders of offences than their first charges. Many repeating offenders were brought forward on charges arising directly out of the settlements of their first cases. The Juvenile Court thus may have either succeeded in breaking the presumed cycle whereby boys arrested on a single charge went on to commit more frequent and more serious offences, or it may have actually inflated the numbers of offenders by causing the arrest of boys whose minor misbehaviours might otherwise have been overlooked. The Court's influence went beyond the power it held over its wards. Families, friends, teachers and employers of the boys were also brought under the control or influence of the probation officer as part of his efforts to control their environments. In a larger sense, the entire community was affected by Court campaigns for new bylaws to control children's activities. The Juvenile Court served a social function by enforcing a standard period of dependency for all children without regard to their personal and/or their parents' wishes in the matter. The lengthier childhood had always existed in law, but Court enforcement and elucidation of the issue made it a matter of wider practice as well. The Juvenile Court also functioned as an economic institution in that it controlled both the occupations of its wards and the regularity with which those occupations were practiced. It played a similar role for parents who came under its power. The evidence suggests that in both its social and its economics functions, the Court was acting in full compliance with the wishes of the general community.