Youth Justice Initiative Evaluation

1. Introduction

The Youth Justice Initiative (YJI) is the federal government’s primary contribution to the continued implementation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). The purpose of the evalua­tion was to examine the YJI and its components in terms of their relevance and performance (effectiveness, efficiency and economy). The Initiative was last evaluated in 2009.

This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the YJI. The evaluation is in accordance with the Treasury Board Secretariat’s 2009 Policy on Evaluation, which requires that all direct program spending of the government be evaluated every five years. It also ensures compliance with the Federal Accountability Act. The evaluation was conducted between November 2014 and August 2015 and covers the 2009-10 to 2013-14 five-year cycle. An evaluation working group with representatives from federal, provincial and territorial governments and the Evaluation Division provided input into the evaluation.

This report contains five sections, including the introduction. Section 2 provides background information on the YJI and its components, and the YJI resources. Section 3 describes the methods used to conduct the evaluation and identifies methodological limitations to the study. Section 4 presents the evaluation findings, and Section 5 presents the conclusions.