All of this sometimes makes his work of teaching very hard, because students confront him with what they hear and see in the media when discussing the contrary information about youth crime. According to McGillivray and Linden, it is a bad idea to treat young offenders like adults. For McGillivray, a young offender cannot be compared to an adult in many aspects and situations. For both, even a violent crime cannot justify the decision to expose a young boy or girl to the harsh process and sentences applied to adults. McGillivray argues the rationality behind the JDA passed in 1908 was to protect young people from the ordinary criminal code.
Linden finds young people more malleable and open to programs than adults.
He believes the appropriate method is to ensure that youth have a process which meets their needs, since the judicial experience has clearly indicated long and severe sentences do not produce the transformation expected of an offender. Smandych points out how complicated it is to have a system which can hold, on the one hand, formal procedures of punishment, and on the other hand aims for treatment.