When a young person is found guilty of breaking a federal law, he or she will receive a record. There are four types of youth records:
A youth justice court record is kept by the youth justice court itself, a review board or any other court that dealt with anything related to the offence (section 114).
When a young person is charged with an offence, the police service that did the investigation may keep a record about that youth’s charge or alleged offence information (section 115). If the charge was for a hybrid offence or an indictable offence, the offence information, photographs and fingerprints contained in the record can be sent to the RCMP’s central repository known as CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre database).
Government records contain information gathered by a government agency or department and may be kept:
An “other” record is any information collected by any person or organization because of an extrajudicial measure or because they are administering or taking part in the administration of the sentence. Information such as the offence committed, the sentence given and personal information about the youth are examples of what might be in a private record (section 116(2)).
All of the information in this Handbook about Youth Records DOES NOT apply in cases where a youth has received an adult sentence. The records of young persons receiving adult sentences are adult records, so they fall under a different law called the Criminal Records Act.
The basic rule in the Youth Criminal Justice Act is that no one can access a youth record (section 118) unless that person is specifically listed in the Act (section 119). Some of the people who can access a record include: