Rural Policing, Youth and Overlapping Fields of Youth Justice

In the current article, we document the changing roles and responsibilities related to the implementation of the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). Police officers’ experiences and responses to the implementation of the YCJA reveal a disparity between the officers’ idealised role and their actual tasks involving youth. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus and field, we consider the field of youth justice and its effects on rural policing strategies in Canada. We consider the shifting standard for police behaviours from data gathered through interviews and focus groups with police officers. We find standards in the field of policing shift to reflect new realities enacted with the YCJA.