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This article examines the role of co‐offending in the development of the delinquent career. Hypotheses derived from Reiss's (1986, 1988) taxonomic theory of co‐offending are tested, using police‐reported data on the delinquent careers and co‐offending of 55,336 Canadian offenders. Support is found for a taxonomic theory and for age‐related and functional theories of co‐offending. The taxonomy consists of two types of offenders—high activity (3 percent) and low activity (97 percent)—whose co‐offending patterns differ during the teenage years but not during childhood. For low‐activity offenders as teenagers, the proportion of co‐offenses decreases with criminal experience. The rate of co‐offending by high‐activity offenders as teenagers is lower at onset than for low‐activity offenders, and it varies little with criminal experience. For both offender types, the proportion of co‐offenses decreases with age, is slightly less in males, and varies with the type of offense. For both offender types, the proportion of co‐offenses in childhood offending is greater than in the teenage years and is unrelated to the offender's age or criminal experience.

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The Youth Criminal Justice Act (2003) was enacted with the intent of decreasing the use of courts and restricting the use of custody for adolescent offenders, while improving the effectiveness of the responses to serious violent youth offenders. This paper assesses the impact of the act in its first five years. It reviews salient provisions of the act dealing with sentencing and diversion, discusses Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence interpreting the act, and presents statistical data on the impact of the YCJA on diversion and sentencing of youth and on youth court and custodial caseloads. The Supreme Court has narrowly interpreted the provisions of the YCJA that allow for the use of custody, contributing to a reduction in use of custody. The Court has also emphasized that youth are to be treated differently from adults and ruled unconstitutional provisions of the YCJA that created a presumption of adult sentencing for the most serious offences by young offenders, limiting the effect of provisions of the act directed at serious violent offenders. The YCJA has succeeded in significantly reducing the rates of use of court and custody, without increasing recorded youth crime. There continue to be significant regional variations in rates of use of youth courts and custody. Although regional differences in the use of court have declined under the YCJA, variation in the use of custody has not been significantly affected by the new act. Youth crime remains a contentious political concern in Canada.

GaAs-based solar cells containing stacked layers of nanostructured type II GaSb quantum ring solar cells are reported which show significantly enhanced infrared photo-response extending out to 1400 nm. The ring formation reduces the net strain energy associated with the large lattice mismatch making it possible to stack multi-layers without the need for strain balancing. The (1 sun) short-circuit current for a 10 layer sample is enhanced by ∼6% compared to a GaAs control cell. The corresponding open-circuit voltage of 0.6 V is close to the theoretical maximum expected from such structures.