Prince George, B.C. – The practice of organized criminal entities of recruiting youths to carry out illegal acts may have been made more difficult under regulatory changes made to the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The changes give the Civil Forfeiture Office the same access to youth records as a number of government bodies. That will increase its ability to pursue referrals involving youth, weakening the incentive for criminals to use young people as tools in illegal activity, such as drug trafficking.

Every year the CFO gets numerous referrals from police that involve youth, but in order to pursue these cases, the CFO has to apply to the courts to obtain the youth records. The court process is costly and time consuming, and many times the office simply declines the referrals. That can result in money being returned to suspected drug traffickers, which in turn reinforces the value of exploiting youth to deliver drugs and money.

Attorney General and Minister of Justice Suzanne Anton says “Our goal is to prevent young people from taking part in organized crime and to prevent gangs from leveraging youth to take part in illegal acts. With these changes, criminals should now know they can no longer hide their drugs or other tools of illegal activity by using a young person to do their dirty work.”