The Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) consideration of when youth should be sentenced as adults is likely to have implications that extend beyond the country’s borders, says a Brock University expert.

This week, the SCC heard arguments about the issue of adult sentencing for young people charged with violent offences under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA).

Professor Voula Marinos in Brock’s Departments of Child and Youth Studies and Forensic Psychology and Criminal Justice says the case will prove important — perhaps not only for Canadians.

“Canada’s youth justice system is premised on our values that young people are different than adults in terms of their level of criminal responsibility,” she says. “The notion that we think about criminal responsibility of young people differently than criminal responsibility of adults has led us to creating a very robust youth criminal justice system that is actually internationally renowned.”

Marinos believes other countries may be looking to Canada as a verdict is rendered, taking that direction into consideration for their own judicial systems.

“The decision may be viewed by other countries as a possible model of how to operationalize reduced moral blameworthiness of young people at sentencing,” she says.

The Canadian system recognizes that young people are vulnerable, still in the process of development, and of reduced maturity, she says.

“Young people are also considered to have more potential to learn and change compared to adults,” she says. “The YCJA aims to protect the public by holding young people accountable for their offences, fairly and proportionately, with options for rehabilitation and reintegration through supportive programs in the community.”

Adult sentences for young people are not automatically considered. Since 2008, the responsibility for proving that a youth should be sentenced as an adult has fallen to the Crown.

The current appeal to the SCC centres on I.M. and S.B. — two young people who were convicted of violent offences and cannot be identified under Canadian law — and whether or not the Crown proved that adult sentencing was appropriate despite their age when the crimes were committed.

Marinos says in any attempt to secure adult sentencing, the Crown must prove the court should not presume the youth has diminished moral blameworthiness and also that a youth sentence would not be of sufficient length to hold the young person accountable for the offence in question.

“The lawyers for I.M. and S. B. argue that rebutting the presumption of diminished moral blameworthiness is a high bar,” she says. “They say the Crown should present expert evidence in rebutting the presumption and that criteria need to be consistently applied by judges in adult-sentence cases across jurisdictions and provinces.”

When it comes to violent crimes, Canadians are largely supportive of adult sentencing, Marinos says. She points to a recent national survey of the Canadian public that found “about two-thirds of respondents support adult sentences for youth found guilty of murder and for repeat violent offenders.”

Marinos says it’s important to remember why the criminal justice system distinguishes young people from adults in the first place.

“It is important to understand that diminished moral blameworthiness is a constitutional right of young people and part of Canada’s obligations as part of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,” says Marinos. “Opening the gate to treating young people as adults is not automatic, and this decision by the SCC will hopefully provide more clarity for the courts to do so only when necessary and with consistency.”

Most important to remember, according to Marinos, is that the goal of sentencing is to balance the nature of an offence with an individual’s circumstances.

“There are many sentences available under the YCJA that can hold young people accountable for their offences,” she says. “With more resources and investment in community-based sentences and addressing the roots of violence, there may be more rehabilitative options to address the complex needs of youth who commit the most violent crimes and less reliance on adult sentences.”