Was the First Juvenile Court in the World in Canada?

As in the United States, the development of a separate juvenile justice system in Canada was linked with the Child Savers Movement. In 1857, two legislative acts were passed to provide special trial procedures and separate institutions for Canadian juveniles. One was an act that called for a more speedy trial for youthful offenders in order to avoid the problems they experienced during long terms of imprisonment prior to going to trial. The other piece of legislation established separate prisons for juveniles. Later, in 1874, Ontario passed an act establishing industrial schools as residential institutions intended to rehabilitate young offenders with less-severe punishment than that inflicted at earlier reformatories.

The Children's Aid Society was formed in Canada in 1891, with an express goal of having a probation officer assigned to each child brought before the court to protect the child and see that the court acted in his or her best interests. Although the first juvenile court in the world is considered to have been established in Chicago in 1899, records indicate that in 1892 (seven years earlier) the Toronto police had established a special "children's court" to hear cases involving youthful offenders, and in 1893 Canada passed a comprehensive Children's Protection Act, which called for special and separate hearings for juveniles (Kelso, 1908).

Nevertheless, it was not until 1908 (nine years after the passage of the Juvenile Court Act, which established the first juvenile court in the United States) that Canada passed the Juvenile Delinquents Act establishing the first officially recognized juvenile courts in that country (Kelso, 1908). The new juvenile courts were given exclusive jurisdiction over juvenile cases and emphasized treatment and prevention over punishment. Most youths who appeared before the Canadian juvenile courts were placed on supervised probation, with the court's main objective being the rehabilitation of youthful offenders so that they would not become adult criminals (Varma, 2007). Several modifications to the Canadian juvenile justice system have been made over the years. Today, the Canadian juvenile courts operate under the auspices of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which came into effect in 2003 and was amended in 2012 and outlines the procedures for dealing with youthful offenders between the ages of 12 and 18 (Canadian DOJ, 2018).

There are striking parallels between the development of juvenile courts in Canada and the United States. Today, Canadian and American juvenile courts are very similar in structure, style, and function.

Why do Americans insist that the first juvenile court in the world was established in the United States? Why do you think there are so many striking similarities between American and Canadian juvenile courts?