LEGAL REPRESENTATION IN CANADIAN JUVENILE-COURTS - ITS NATURE, EXTENT AND DETERMINANTS

As a first step toward analyzing the effects of the "major change" in Canadian juvenile justice wrought by the guarantee of legal counsel, this paper examines the nature and extent of legal representation, and the factors associated with variations in legal representation, in Canadian juvenile courts shortly before the passage of the Young Offenders Act. Goodman's modified path analysis was used to analyze observational and file data collected by the National Study on the Functioning of the Juvenile Court in 1981 in five large city juvenile courts operating under the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Large variations in the extent and types of representation were found between courts. Within courts, legal factors - prior record and current charges - were the main determinants of likelihood and type of representation, but some effects of extra-legal factors were also found.