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Extrajudicial measures under the Youth Criminal Justice Act require police to reorient their thinking about how to respond to youth. The act provides specific structure and guidance to police about the appropriateness of extrajudicial measures and does not preclude its use when a youth received one in the past. The emphasis on accountability and proportionality suggests that police ought to be driven by the seriousness of the youth's offending behaviour and much less by the youth's record. Drawing from a sample of 70 police officers from five jurisdictions within Ontario, our surveys (N = 70) and in-depth interviews (N = 64) with police reveal that they place relatively heavy weight on prior police contact of any kind (past extrajudicial measure or finding of guilt) and that this has a significant influence on their attitudes towards diverting youth for minor offences like mischief and shoplifting. The results are analyzed within the context of literature on police attitudes and decision making to divert in Canada.

Scholars have long emphasized the importance of teacher training in higher education, including in sociology. Such calls have led to modest improvements in opportunities for graduate students to develop teaching-related skills and experience. However, many of these opportunities are not specific to sociology and may lack a teaching component. In this paper, we outline a teaching fellowship model for graduate student teacher training that integrates group training sessions, peer collaboration, and a teaching practicum component under the guidance of a faculty mentor. In the fellowship, graduate student teaching fellows receive a stipend for sharing the development and teaching of an undergraduate course, with supports and feedback throughout. We include data from post-fellowship questionnaires and follow-up data from fellows who went on to teach their own courses to highlight the strengths of the program. The data indicate that the fellowship is an overwhelmingly positive experience for graduate students.

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Extrajudicial sanctions (EJS) under the YCJA are meant to make youth accountable in a fair and proportionate way and to be a meaningful consequence, yet little is known about whether these goals are being accomplished from the perspective of youth. This exploratory study was aimed at examining the perceptions of young persons who have accepted an EJS in a single courthouse in Ontario. Interviews were conducted with youth (N = 20) who provided critical insight into their views about valuable programs, such as counselling, and less valuable aspects, such as writing an essay about the impact of having a criminal record. Some youth revealed that the process of coming to court to be offered an EJS and accept it was more meaningful and made them more accountable than the requirements of the program itself. This research underscores the importance of considering the perspective of young people if the youth justice system is to accomplish its key goals. Such an approach may not only lead to responses that have a greater impact on their behaviour, but it may also, in turn, shift them to be more active and engaged participants in taking responsibility for their actions and the process of justice.