Canadian Federal Youth Justice Policy Analysis Social Sciences Essay

Students will select an official FEDERAL youth justice policy that is currently operating under Canada’s current criminal justice system and critically analyse it. It must be a youth policy that students believe is on some level problematic, and thus, is in need of revision.
CHOSEN TOPIC: youth being tried as an adult, analyze both pros and cons and inconsistencies with this policy. Note, make sure it is Canadian. Please refer to attachment for strict details regarding this paper

CRMN 3027 – Delinquency, Deviance, and Youth Crime

Term Paper Formal Assignment Instructions

Late penalty: 1% deduction off of final course grade per day (including weekends)

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this assignment is to help students develop the skills of policy analysis and international policy transfer, both of which are essential for those interested in pursuing either careers with the government (federal, provincial, regional, municipal, or the United Nations), or positions of leadership within their professions (i.e. law, medicine, education, social work). Policy analysis is also an integral part of the work carried out by those who work for both Canadian and international non-government organisations. Lastly, for those interested in pursuing academia as a long long-term career, researchers and professors are routinely called upon to analyse policy for the government, private organisations, or the general public via community forums, editorials, and interviews with radio and television media.

FORMAL COURSE SYLLABUS INSTRUCTIONS

Students will select an official FEDERAL youth justice policy that is currently operating under Canada’s current criminal justice system and critically analyse it. It must be a youth policy that students believe is on some level problematic, and thus, is in need of revision. They must provide a detailed overview of the policy, noting when the policy was first implemented and by which government or which federal/provincial/municipal authorities. They must outline the stated goals of the policy, if such information is available. They must provide information about the current administration of the policy (i.e. is it in wide practice, or is it sparingly used, where is it practiced most frequently, least frequently, how much does it cost?, etc.), whether or not the policy enjoys widespread public support, etc. Finally, drawing on criminological theory and research, students must advance an argument about why they believe the policy is, on some level, ineffective. In critically evaluating the effectiveness of the policy, they should draw on evidence from the Canadian context (i.e. available data on rates of crime, recidivism rates associated with the policy, etc.), as well as criminological theory and research. Lastly, students should propose some revisions to the policy to make it more effective (or less ineffective). These revisions must incorporate some research on a policy (or policies) from abroad. More detailed information will be provided on the course website. Terms papers should range between 15 and 20 pages double spaced Times New Roman Font. Papers must strictly adhere to APA style guidelines (not just internal citations and bibliography). More information will be available through the course website.  The late penalty for this assignment is a 1% deduction for each day late (including weekends) off of one’s final course grade.  

SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Students will become comfortable researching Canadian youth criminal justice policy. They will also gain experience using criminological and sociological theory to critically analyse crime policy and propose crime policy reforms. Lastly, they will be introduced to international policy transfer by drawing on international youth crime policy research in order to develop Canadian youth crime policy reform recommendations. 

The skills that students will develop include:

1. International policy transfer.
2. Scholarly research in the fields of youth crime and youth criminal justice.
3. Critical policy analysis.
4. Criminological theory application.
5. Thesis development and articulation.
6. Scholarly and policy writing (writing clarity, argument structure, spelling/grammar and formatting).

ELEMENTS OF THE POLICY ANALYSIS

1. Policy Background

The first, crucial, part of the assignment is selecting and carrying out a careful and preliminary review of the FEDERAL YOUTH JUSTICE POLICY that students have chosen. The expectation here is that students provide as detailed and as descriptive of an account of their policy as they possibly can.

1. Policy Analysis

The second element of the assignment is the critical analysis. This is an analytical evaluation of the policy. There is wide latitude here; however, three points should be borne in mind:

1) Students are expected to articulate a THESIS that argues HOW and WHY the policy they have selected is problematic and in need of remedy. This is the core of the policy analysis. A separate section below covers the THESIS element of your analysis.

2) Students are expected to support their policy analysis with an abundance of evidence.

In assessing and analysing your policy, please strive to draw on as much evidence as possible (given time and space constraints), including available statistics as well as primary and secondary academic literature, non-academic sources (including government documents, non-governmental agency reports, policy briefs, newspaper articles from media sources of the highest quality, and course material). While Canadian is ideal, often there will not be much information available (much Canadian YOUTH crime policy is relatively under researched compared to countries such as the US and the UK). However, there is an abundance of research on similar YOUTH policies in other countries including the US.

Students are encouraged to draw on the international literature that canvasses their topics. Having said that, it is also important to read international evidence/research critically and to be cognisant of cross-national differences in YOUTH policy. Students are encouraged to look at this research carefully and question to what extent the findings might be useful BUT limited within the Canadian context. This shows that students are critically analysing the research they use. This doesn’t mean they should not use this research, but rather that they should QUALIFY it (point out where it might be useful, but also where it might fall short).

Students are also encouraged to draw on theoretical research. For example, David Garland has some excellent theory on fear of crime, and the politics of fear and control in his book The Culture of Control (2001). The key is to try and draw on theories that have solid empirical support and that are being used today.

3a) Thesis

The YOUTH policy analysis (see above- this is the crux of the paper) should be encapsulated and packaged as a coherent thesis (a thesis statement is important here- this should be found in your introductory paragraph). A thesis is a central argument. This is the overall message of the paper. A thesis need not be one idea just as a thesis statement need not be one sentence. A thesis can contain multiple points and arguments, just as a thesis statement can be composed of multiple sentences. The point is that the thesis must be clear and it must be argumentative. The students’ thesis MUST NOT be opinionated, but rather argumentative ANALYTICALLY. In other words, students should be taking a critical “position” or “stance” on their policy and supporting it with evidence. This position or stance should be laid out clearly in the thesis statement, and then fully developed in the body of the paper. When students present the analysis in their paper, they should be doing so in a way that is clearly supporting their thesis or speaking to their thesis. (Helpful hint: Do not let the thesis and argument end at the introduction- remember that the paper is the thesis and argument). Please be in touch if you have any questions regarding what a thesis is or should look like for this assignment. In the end, your paper should be an argument that is strongly backed up by EVIDENCE (see above).

3b) Theory as a part of your thesis.

Your thesis should be THEORETICALLY informed. What this means is that students should draw on a sociological/criminological theory to motivate and develop their arguments. Students are not necessarily trying to prove a theory or advance it, but rather they are using a theory to support their argument in a scholarly way. In non-academic policy work, scholarly theory is often (though admittedly, not always) very important. But the point of policy work for this paper is not to engage/reformulate the theory (though these are important ends), but rather to use the theory to illustrate and/or support policy analysis and policy recommendations. Be in touch if you would like clarification. For the purposes of this paper, please be sure to introduce, clearly define, and develop an explanation of any theory used. It need not be the focus of the paper, but it should still be sufficiently explained.

1. YOUTH Policy Recommendations

Students’ critical analysis must include proscriptions for moving forward and remedying the problematic YOUTH policy. This again should be rooted in the thesis. Students are REQUIRED to look outside of Canada for help on this matter. There is an enormously wide range of variation in YOUTH criminal justice policies around the world, and students will often be able to find policies elsewhere which are consistent with what they believe should be happening here in Canada. Please be open to any and all countries (students often neglect “developing” countries or countries unfortunately stereotyped as regressive or dangerous- i.e. middle east, communist or former communist states, and the “global south” where we often find extremely innovative and creative YOUTH policies that are miles ahead of what exists here in Canada). But of course, the northern European Scandinavian countries also, for example, have very promising YOUTH policies to look at. And the US should not be ignored either. While students are welcome to borrow examples from a YOUTH policy (or multiple YOUTH polices) from abroad, it is important to remember that students are still proposing their OWN recommendations. Thus, they should be drawing on information about YOUTH policies from abroad to inform their own solutions, not simply taking a YOUTH policy from one country and bringing it home to Canada. Admittedly, policy analysts passively borrow from abroad all the time. But given that many students in this class will go on to become the future leaders of policy development in Canada, the purpose of this assignment and course is to learn how to adopt policy effectively!

4.a) Feasibility and Fundability

It is imperative that, within your paper, you address both the feasibility and fundability of your YOUTH policy recommendations. Students should imagine that they are proposing recommendations to government officials who have to weigh multiple factors beyond just whether or not the policy recommendation would be effective at meeting the goals that it sets out to achieve. These include crime reduction, but also financial costs and budgetary constraints, logistics (in particular how effective elements of a foreign policy will work within the Canadian context), public opinion, and political motivations. Questions that policymakers need to ask are: Will this reduce crime? How can we effectively evaluate this policy to know if its’ working? How much will this policy cost? Is it worth the money? Is it worth diverting funds away from X in order to support this policy? How can we realistically do this? Will this policy work in Canada as well as it works in country X? What will the public think of this? By supporting this policy, am I risking my political future? It is important for students to address these issues in their paper when they are discussing their policy recommendation.

FORMAT

The format of the paper is a formal essay. This is where things diverge significantly from the proposal. There is much leeway in how students structure their papers, but they should adopt APA formatting. All evidence introduced must be formally cited in text and included in students’ references pages or bibliographies. Students should have an introduction and a conclusion, and they should have a thesis statement in their introduction.

The paper should range from 15 and 20 pages.

It should be written double spaced using Times New Roman 12 size font with APA guidelines applying for margin sizes.

Students should be drawing on a minimum of 15 sources. Again, this includes academic sources (including textbook), refereed journal articles, books, government documents/statistics, policy papers, and policy reports, etc. 

TERM PAPER EVALUATION GUIDELINES

1. Topic

Students have chosen a suitable topic that meets the requirements of the term paper. They have chosen an appropriate Canadian FEDERAL YOUTH JUSTICE POLICY and have provided a critical analysis that exposes its weaknesses. Students draw upon international YOUTH CRIMINAL JUSTICE policy research in order to make recommendations to improve upon the weaknesses of the Canadian FEDERAL YOUTH JUSTICE POLICY.

2. Thesis

Students advance a thesis that presents an ARGUMENT for HOW and WHY the Canadian FEDERAL YOUTH JUSTICE POLICY that they have selected is problematic and in need of remedy. They then use their paper to build and develop their thesis. Students will be evaluated on how clear their thesis statement is, how clearly they articulate their thesis throughout their paper, and how logical and persuasive their thesis is. The feasibility and fundability of the students’ proposed recommendation will be assessed here.

3. Evidence

Students draw on evidence to develop their thesis. See above for guidelines on evidence. Students must provide AS MUCH evidence as possible, and they are advised to be as concrete and detailed as possible.  

4. Structure and Organisation

Students’ papers have clear introductions and conclusions. In their papers, the thesis has a clear and logical flow, and is easy for the reader to follow along. Students are strongly encouraged to consult writing guides on how to formally structure a term paper, and they are welcome to contact me for feedback and advice. They are also strongly encouraged to consult the Writing Centre.

5. Writing (Is it polished?) 

Students’ writing is clear and elegant, sentences are nicely constructed, paragraphs are an appropriate length and are nicely constructed, writing is polished, and there are no spelling and/or grammar errors. Spelling and grammar will be taken into serious consideration when grading your papers.

6. Citations (APA Citations)

 Bibliography and internal citations are accurately laid out according to APA style in students’ papers. The paper conforms to term paper instructions in terms of font, size, layout, etc. (exception: no abstract required).

7. Format

All aspects of the term paper conform to proper APA formatting style and formal assignment instructions, i.e. title page, margins, heading, font, size, spacing, etc. (exception: no abstract required).

8. Grading Rubric

Final term papers will be graded based on the Ontario Tech. grading guidelines; which are included below. Students are advised to pay close attention to the “grade definitions”.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

TURNITIN