Canadian Youth Crime in Context

• Author: Nicholas Bala/Sanjeev Anand
• Pages: 676-708

676

CHAPTER 10

CANADIAN YOUTH

CRIME IN CONTEXT

A. APPROACHES TO YOUTH JUSTICE:

CANADA IN AN INTERNATIONAL

CONTE XT

Concerns about adolescent irresponsibility, rebellion, and offending

date back through history to Roman times and are common in all mod-

ern societies.1 Pattern s of offending, however, are not the same in all

societies. While some level of youthful deviance is an inevitable part of

the adolescent stage of development, a host of complex social, econom-

ic, political, cultural, and legal factors interact to inf‌luence the nature

and extent of youthful offending.

Canada is going through rapid and profound social change, which

is inf‌luencing adolescent behaviour as well as societal perceptions of

and reactions to that behaviour. Canada has a serious youth crime

problem, but contrary to the perceptions of many members of the pub-

lic, it is not a problem that is s piralling out of control. While the re-

ported number of cases in youth court incre ased substantia lly in the

decade or so after t he Young Offenders Act came into force in 1984,2 of-

1 K. Onstad, “ What Are We Afraid Of? The Myth of Youth Cri me” Saturday Night

(March 1997) at 46. See als o Bernard Schiss el, Social Dimensions of Youth Justice

(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993) at 10.

2 Young Offenders Act, R. S.C. 1985, c. Y-1, enacted as S.C. 1980 –81–82–83, c.

110 [YOA]. The Act was also amende d in 1985 through An Act to amend the

Canadia n Youth Crime in Conte xt 677

f‌icial reports of youth crime seemed to slowly fall or at least stabilize in

the 1990s. Alt hough the youth cr ime rate i n Canad a has f‌luctuated in

recent years — generally increasing from 1999 to 2003 then decreasing

for the next three years — the 2006 youth crime rate (the most current

year for which reliable statistics exist) was 6 percent below the rate a

decade earlier and 25 percent below the 1991 peak.3 Further, there is

still controversy over whether the increa se in juvenile crime report s in

the late 1980s ref‌lected a change in youth behaviour or police reporting

practices. In the 1990s there was a dramatic increase in media coverage

of youth crime in Canada, and politicians gave unprecedented atten-

tion to the issue of youth offending and to public demands for tougher

laws for young offenders.

Canada has higher rates of youthful violence than many Com-

monwealth and European countries but also has a much lower rate of

serious youth violence than does the United States, especially if the

comparison focuses on youth homicide rates.4 Ca nada has come to

rely on a formal youth justice system re sponse and youth custody to a

greater extent than many other countries.5 This type of response is an

Young Offenders Act, the Crimin al Code, the Penitentiary Act, an d the Prisons and

Reformator ies Act, R.S.C. 1985 (2d Supp.), c. 24 (in force 1 September 1986 and

1 November 1986) and in 1995 through A n Act to amend the Young Offenders Act

and the Criminal Code, S.C. 1995, c. 19.

3 Statistic s Canada, “Youth Crime in Ca nada, 2006” (2008) 28:3 Juristat at 2.

4 Because un iform def‌initions of what const itutes a youth and what constitute s

an offence do not exis t, comparing youth violent cri me rates among different

nations is d iff‌icult. However, in 2002 the World Health Orga nization (WHO)

published stat istics on comparative homicide r ates among young people aged

ten to twenty-ni ne years. These statist ics ref‌lect how many people aged ten to

twenty-nine were v ictims of homicide. Neverthe less, the WHO report als o notes

that the ma in perpetrators of violence ag ainst young people are adolescent s

and young adults: Etie nne G. Krug et al., eds., World Report on Violen ce and

Health (Geneva: World Health Organ ization, 2002) at 25 [WHO]. Consequently,

these stat istics give a rough idea of the compa rative rate of homicide commit-

ted by young people acros s a number of different nations. The hom icide rate

per 100,000 populat ion aged ten to twenty-nine years wa s 1.7 for Canada, 1.6

for Australia , 1.8 for New Zealand , 0.6 for France, 0.8 for Germa ny, 1.5 for

the Netherland s, 0.9 for the United Kin gdom, and 11.0 for the United State s.

Sweden and Norway ha d fewer than twenty death s reported, so their youth

homicide rates were not c alculated: see WHO at 2 8– 29.

5 For example, using d ata collected on various date s between 2004 and 2007, the

youth incarcerat ion rate was 0.75 per 1000 youth under eighteen year s of age in

Canada, St atistics Canada, “ Youth Custody and Commun ity Services in Ca n-

ada, 2005/20 06” (2008) 28:8 Juristat at 8; the youth incarcer ation rates for other

nations were as fol lows: the United States 1.4, the Netherlands 0.57, England

and Wales 0.25, Germany 0.23, Sc otland 0.17, Northern Ireland, 0.16, France

YOUTH CRIM INAL JUSTICE LAW678

expensive and often ineffective way to combat youth crime; its inability

to reduce levels of offending seems to create demand s for ever more

punitive responses, while its expense creates a growing justice cor rec-

tions industry t hat can lobby for ever more resources. While the youth

justice and corrections systems have an important role in responding to

crimes, they play only a sm all part in making Canad a a safer nation.

B. CRIME PREV ENTION THROUGH SOCIAL

DEVELOPMENT

This book h as examined the manner in which youths who have com-

mitted offences, or who are suspected of having committed offences,

are dealt with under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.6 Although those

youths old enough to be within the ambit of the Act can be the subject

of interventions th at will prevent fur ther offending, if t here are appro-

priate a nd suff‌icient resources directed toward t hem, the most effect-

ive youth crime prevention strategies target younger children and their

families. In 2001, the Surgeon General of the United States released a

report on the magnitude, causes, and prevention of youth violence.7 The

report documented that youths who become violent before age thirteen

generally commit a larger number of offences over a longer time and

their offences tend to be more severe than those whose violent tenden-

cies are f‌irst mani fested later in life. This f‌inding underscores the need

for youth crime prevention initiatives that target young children. Some

offences, however, are committed by youths who did not display in-

0.04, Norway 0.09, Sweden 0.007, Denmark 0.002, and Finl and 0.002: see John

Muncie, “The Punitive Turn in Juven ile Justice: Cultures of Control and R ights

Compliance in Wester n Europe and the USA” (2008) 8 Youth Justice 107 at

116 [Muncie]. One must be cautious in re ading these stati stics because, while

the Canad ian youth incarceration rate i s based on the average daily num ber of

young people in sentence d custody and remand, it is not clea r whether the data

reported by other n ations are based on total c ustodial populations or ju st those

under sentence (see Muncie at 114). Moreover, several of these nation s have

threshold ages of c riminal respon sibility that differ f rom the age of twelve used

in Canada (see Munc ie at 113). Finally, it should be noted that Canad a’s youth

incarcerat ion rate has drastical ly fallen since 1 April 2003. For a fu ll discussion

of how and why this h as occurred, see Chapte rs 1, 5, and 8.

6 Youth Criminal Justice Act, S.C. 2002, c. 1 (royal a ssent 19 February 2002, in

force 1 April 2003) [YCJA].

7 United States, P ublic Health Service, O ff‌ice of the Surgeon General, Youth Vio-

lence: A Repor t of the Surgeon General (Washington, DC: Surgeon Gener al of the

United States, 20 01), online: www.surgeongenera l.gov/librar y/youthviolence/.