“17 Going on 23”: Sentencing Young People to Life in Canada

Canada is one of 67 countries worldwide that allows young people—those under the age of 18—to be sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the presumption of diminished moral blameworthiness of young people as a constitutional principle of fundamental justice and invalidated a law that presumed youth should be sentenced as adults for some serious crimes, including murder. The burden is, therefore, always on the Crown to rebut the presumption and prove that a youth sentence would not be long enough to hold the young person accountable for their behaviour. Where the presumption can be rebutted, for most crimes the judge has discretion to tailor an adult sentence to the facts of the offence and the person before them. However, for murder, a life sentence (with the possibility of parole) is the mandatory adult sentence. This paper analyzes reported Canadian cases from 2008–2022 in which young people were sentenced for murder and finds that life sentences are often imposed. The Crown regularly seeks them and the court orders them in more than two-thirds of the reported cases in which they are sought. Through a careful reading of the cases, the paper examines why and how life sentences are imposed so often and concludes with some thoughts on the normalization of this extreme punishment for youth and the need to revisit its constitutionality.