As of April 2003, Canada has new youth justice legislation that has implications for how police do their work in the areas of informal action (extrajudicial measures or sanctions). Because of legislative change, there exists a strong potential for challenges within the police culture's typifications and recipes for action in how police officers define a youth as a delinquent and an offense as serious. Using a mixed method–mixed model design and data from 202 semistructured interviews collected during 2002, this article explores the continuity and discontinuity in definitions between the police culture and the legislation. These are compared and contrasted to assess whether the nature of official responses to juvenile crime will differ in the new legislative environment. The results suggest that for legislative change to be effective in harmonizing police behavior, it must not only be represented in policies and procedures but also incorporated into the police culture.
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