Youth Justice
Maha Masoud Royal Roads University
Just 306
October 24, 2012
Barabara Jackson

Table of Contents Introduction 3 Social Environment Affects Understanding 3 Case 1: A Historical Case 4 Case 2: A Historical Case 4 Case 3: A Current Case 5 Discussion 5 Conclusion 5 References 7

Introduction
Throughout Canadian history juvenile crime has been an issue. There has always been a debate about rationales for sentencing the child, youth, and young adults. A current debate concerns the age of the offender and whether sentencing should be differentiated between persons on the basis of age. In other words, does age matter when considering sentencing for youth offenders? This issue is considered, as well, from a victim’s perspective. Should an offender be treated differently because of age? I believe that there should not be a separate justice systems for the young offender. The purpose of this paper is to explore how social environment, not age, affects youth’s ability to understand the ramification of committing an offence. I will discuss why age does not matter and relate this argument to three cases concerning youth and crime. Age is not as much a part of the equation as youths’ understanding of the offence committed, and that because of this, each offender should be considered on a case to case basis and the offender’s understanding of the crime should be thoroughly considered.
Social Environment Affects Understanding
A youth’s understanding of an offence is affected by the social environment in which they are exposed. Vygotski (1929) believed that a child’s characteristics were determined by social situations. He explained that the child’s social situation affected their development. The characteristic of a person from childhood to young adult develop depending on social environment:
The social situation of development represents the initial moment for all dynamic changes that occur in development during the given period. It determines wholly and completely the forms and the path along which the child will acquire ever newer personality characteristics (Vygotski, 1929, p. 198).
I believe that Vygotski (1929) was correct in his social theory. A youth’s social environment affects behaviour. An example of how social environment can affect understanding can be seen in a video by Plan International USA Sponsor a Child. A twelve year old orphan boy, named Alex, had to act as an adult because he had to take care of his younger brother after his parents died. This social environment dictated how Alex had to grow up. He had to develop an adult way of understanding his reality (Plan International, n.d.). On the other hand, a child who is supplied for and sheltered would have more of an opportunity to stay in a childlike social environment. The child would have less understanding of a grown up reality. This example shows that social environment affects behavior. The age of the person does not matter as much as the youth’s understanding and social environment. This can be seen in the following three cases.
Case 1: A Historical Case
On April 19th 1737, in Annapolis, Nova Scotia, a 10 year old boy servant burned his employers house down to kill his employer. The servant did this because he was tortured, deprived of food and severely maltreated (History of Nova Scotia, n.d.).
Case 2: A Historical Case
In 1849 George Green an 11-year-old adopted boy, living on a farm in the County of Peterborough, hacked his 5-year-old adopted sister to death with a hoe because of the jealousy he felt when more attention was paid to the sister by the adoptive parents (Hassard, 1924). George green was sentenced to be executed in 1850.
Case 3: A Current Case
On April 23rd 2006, Jasmine Richardson and her boyfriend murdered her parents and her 8 year old brother by stabbing them to death. She murdered her parents, due to her parents grounding her and forbidding her to see her