For some heinous acts, fresh starts via the Youth Criminal Justice Act are less important than fair warnings to the rest of society
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A quiet community two hours northwest of Edmonton became a site of true human horror last month when a young woman of only 18 — dressed for a night out in the city, not a weekend of camping — was found bleeding from numerous stab wounds in a ditch. Her attackers had dumped her there to die.
And because those accused of butchering her were under 18, there’s a good chance we’ll never get to learn their names, even if they are convicted.
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That’s the obscenity that’s folded into the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). Designed to give youth offenders a generous shot at turning their lives around in adulthood, when they’re more likely to make better choices, the law bans their identities from being published unless, upon conviction, they receive an adult sentence. It’s completely sensible in most cases: the graffiti someone scrawled on the school as a foolish teen shouldn’t follow them on the internet forever. But the same can’t be said about cases of extreme violence.
Examples of highly violent people remaining unknown to the public hence can be found throughout the country. Here’s a cross-section: last month, four male suspects were implicated in the “targeted gang sexual........