Youth Criminal Justice Act - Privacy

Privacy

Section 110 of the Youth Criminal Justice Act outlines privacy in relation to the identity of young offenders, access to their criminal records, and disclosure of their personal or trial information. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act trial information can be published in media or print but identifying information (i.e., name) about young offenders cannot. This publication ban exists to prevent stigmatization of young offenders, which has been found to hinder the rehabilitation of youth. Furthermore, the identity of youth victims cannot be published for the same reasons. Breaking the publication ban is a criminal offence It is unknown whether publication of identifying information on social networking sites like Facebook is a violation of the ban, which has been the source of recent controversy.

The ban can be lifted only under exceptional circumstances:

• when the youth offender receives an adult sentence;
• when young offenders are accused or convicted of presumptive offences;
• if the identifying information is necessary for the capture of a young offender;
• or if the young offender requests for their name to be published. Youth requests for publication are subject to judicial discretion.

Youth criminal records cannot be viewed by anyone other than criminal justice officials (e.g. lawyers) and only within particular time frames from the offence.

Disclosure (“the communication of information other than by way of publication” of youth information is banned under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Communicating information about youth offenders through disclosure is a criminal offence