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The Liberal Party issued a press release yesterday in response to Justice Minister Vic Toews mention of allowing courts to have jurisdiction over offenders as young as 10. The Liberal Party announced that Liberal Justice Critic Condemns Conservative Plan to Jail 10 Year Olds. Heh heh, that is not what was said but in perusing the release you get this bit: Despite the Conservative government’s claims of rampant criminality among children, statistics clearly show that the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which was introduced by the previous Liberal government, is working. Since the law came into effect, Canada’s disproportionately high youth incarceration rates are declining and youth custody facilities are being closed across the country. (liberal.ca)
Exactly…. incarceration rates are dropping but in the meantime youth crime is being under-reported. From a Statistics Canada report on crime from 2005 that never seems to make it into the media, even though the media continues to report that youth crime is declining (another example): When youths aged 12 to 17 come into contact with police, they can be formally charged or processed through other means. In 2005, police charged over 73,000 youths with Criminal Code offences. A greater number of youths (96,000) were cleared by means other than laying a formal charge (Table 7). In fact, the number of youths dealt with in this way is likely even higher, given that not all police services maintain complete records for cases where extrajudicial (non-court) measures are applied. These would only include less serious forms of youth crime, since extrajudicial measures (e.g., taking no further action, informal police warnings, referrals to community programs, formal police cautions, Crown cautions and extrajudicial sanctions programs) are only encouraged by the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) for non-violent and minor offences. The rate of youths charged dropped 6%, while the rate of youths cleared otherwise fell 7% in 2005. Taken together, youth crime decreased 6%, representing the second consecutive decrease (Figure 15). The youth crime rate decreased throughout the 1990s, reaching a low in 1999, and generally increased from 1999 to 2003. The 2005 youth crime rate was the lowest since 1999. Since the introduction of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) in 2003, the proportion of apprehended youths who are formally charged by police has dropped from 56% in 2002 (pre-YCJA) to 43% in 2005 (post-YCJA).  (Stats Can - html - pdf)
Sometimes youth offenders are given only a warning because the police realize that nothing is going to happen and therefore it doesn’t get reported. You don’t report that you did nothing. Violent offence increases: * Youths charged with homicide has increased nearly 50% since 2001 (44 to 65).
* Youths charged/diverted with most violent offences (see above criteria) has increased approximately 8% (7,375 to 7,992).
* Youths charged/diverted with robbery up nearly 10% (3703 to 4070) and roughly 30 % increase for robbery with firearms (247 to 311)
This little bit doesn’t seem to make the media either but I think it is worthy of being reported. The overall outlook doesn’t seem balanced since you can deduce that when you have higher rates of more violent crime, it tends to normalize what may not be that violent and therefore it may not get reported because the offenders may be let off with a warning. Sample: Tell the young car thief not to do that and drive away (warn-s.6) Because of the Youth Criminal Justice Act we can all feel good but in reality it is obvious that there is much more going on.
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