CC200 Youth Justice

1
CC200Youth Justice

• The Rise and Fall of Delinquency
• Chapter One

2
The Public Issue

• Over the last twenty years, youth crime has been
  the focus of public concern and discourse.
• Canada-wide, newspaper headlines warned their
  readers of a serious crime problem if immediate
  steps were not taken.
• Beyond the headlines, newspapers have
  consistently carried horrific accounts of violent
  criminal deeds carried out by young Canadians.

3

• By the close of the 1990s, media headlines were
  fuelling public fear and concern regarding
  violent crimes committed by girls.
• School violence was also added to the growing
  list of horrific youth behaviors.
• News coverage of violent crimes is not surprising
  think of the old saying in media if it bleeds,
  it leads.

4

• What may be surprising is the amount of coverage
  that youth crime generates in the media, when
  those who study crime in society are well aware
  that adult crime far surpasses youth crime, both
  in quality and severity.
• It is also surprising when one looks at the
  proportion of youth crime that is violent to that
  which is not.

5
Questions to consider

• According to recent police statistics (2005), the
  rate of violent youth crime has remained
  relatively stable since 1992 and actually
  decreased by 2 percent in 2004.
• Why, then does the public believe that violent
  youth crime is on the rise?
• What potential impact has this belief had on
  legislation regarding youth crime?

6

• Media coverage along with personal experiences,
  in some cases, prompted many Canadians to express
  their concerns about out-of-control youth and
  criminal behaviors.
• The general public consensus regarding the Young
  Offenders Act (YOA) was that it was ineffective
  in curbing youth crime, that it was too lenient,
  and that it needed to be over-hauled.

7

• Youth crime became a focal point for politicians
  during the 1993 federal election.
• As a result, the YOA was revised three times
  before being replaced in April of 2003 by the
  Youth Criminal Justice Act.
• Even with the implementation of the new Act, the
  flow of media on violent youth and youth crime
  did not slow down, nor did the rhetoric of
  politicians youth crime was still a major issue
  in the federal election of 2006.

8

• The same old new issue is the ability of the
  new legislation to offer more than a slap on the
  wrist for youth engaged in criminal and violent
  behaviors.
• If we are to believe media accounts and coverage
  of the new Act, we could conclude that the Act
  has failed, that nothing is new, and that youth
  justice is still a slap on the wrist.

9
Two Sides to the Same Old Debate1995-2005

• Part of the Liberal federal governments 1995 YOA
  reforms involved a Strategy for Reform of the
  complete youth justice system.
• An important part of this process was the
  implementation of public forums across Canada to
  discuss the issue of youth crime, to propose
  potential solutions, and to make recommendations
  to the House of Commons Standing Committee on
  Justice and Legal Affairs.

10

• The core of the debate centered around the
  question of whether the YOA effectively
  controlled youth crime.
• The public was clearly divided into two camps
  youth advocates and the law-and-order advocates.

11
Youth Advocate Position

• This camp included social workers, lawyers, and
  other front-line youth workers and viewed
  children and youth as victims in need of
  protection.
• They believed that neither the YOA nor children
  were the problem.
• For this group, the important issues were those
  related to the difficulties that youth encounter
  in an increasingly complex society.

12

• This perspective focuses on the current economic,
  social, and political realities that can be a
  tremendous hardship for some young people and
  their families.
• Economic and/or social problems may exacerbate
  other problems with families and some young
  people are forced to leave home as a matter of
  survival.

13

• Youth advocates were fundamentally concerned with
  the problems experienced by young people rather
  than youth crime.
• It was their opinion that youth crime had been
  exaggerated and misrepresented in most public
  accounts, particularly by the media.

14
The Law-and-Order Argument

• The other perspective was the one most often seen
  in media presentations.
• This law-and-order group viewed children and
  youth accused of crime as an enemy from whom
  law-abiding citizens (adults) needed protection.
• This group included police officers, store
  security personnel, small-business owners, and
  home-owners associations.

15

• They viewed youth as out-of-control and argued
  that both youth and the YOA were problems.
• They argued for a get tough on crime policy and
  called tougher legislation to deal with the
  perceived problem.

16
Youth were a problem because

1. They were said to lack respect.
2. They lacked a sense of responsibility.
3. They were increasingly involved in violent
   criminal behavior.

17
The YOA was problematic because

1. Youth could not be identified.
2. Youth were not punished for their crimes.
3. Youth had more rights than their victims.
4. Youth were too protected by the YOA.

18

• Ten years later, people are again gathering to
  discuss the youth justice system, only this time
  it is the Youth Criminal Justice Act that is
  under scrutiny.
• It is interesting that even though the
  participants in the forum have changed the focus
  is the same the youth justice system.
• The same arguments are still being put forward by
  youth advocates and law-and-order advocates.
• So, why does appear that the more things change
  the more they remain the same?

19
The Good Old Days

• Perhaps the most basic assumption influencing
  public views regarding youth crime is the notion
  that todays youth are more engaged in violent
  and criminal behaviors.
• Yet crime statistics do not support this idea.
• Canadian crime statistics dating back to 1885
  indicate that youth have always been involved in
  criminal activity, including violent crime.

20

• It is hard to find historical data on youth crime
  and public responses prior to 1885 because youth
  crime statistics were not always kept in the same
  manner that they are today.
• There are no consistent prison records, for
  example, until 1885 when Kingston Penitentiary
  the first Canadian prison opened.

21

• Most Canadian criminologist studying in this area
  have relied more on the work of historians than
  criminologist to develop an understanding of
  youth crime and justice in the early years.
• So, what have we discovered?

22
Lawless and Disobedient Youth 17th and 18th
Centuries.

• Information on youth involvement in crime in
  Canada during this time period is sketchy.
• What information we can uncover indicates that
  concerns were expressed about youth as a problem
  in North American colonies as early as the late
  17th century.

23

• Throughout recorded history, children in European
  societies have had a different legal status than
  adults.
• In essence, what this means is simply that they
  had no legal rights.
• Infanticide, child labor, and child slavery were
  common.
• The idea that children had legal rights or that
  they had legal rights to protection from adults
  did not emerge until the 19th century.

24

• Colonial administrators brought traditions and
  legal codes to the New World.
• The first European settler executed in the
  territories of Canada was a 16 year old female
  who was convicted of theft in 1640.
• However, in some cases, young persons were
  treated with more leniency. For example

25

• In 1672 a 13 year old girl who had helped her
  parents murder her husband escaped execution
  because of her age.
• Instead, she was required to watch the execution
  of her parents.

26
Colonial Public Issue

• The issue for colonial administration in the
  territories of Canada was the freedom and
  independence that young people had relative to
  their counterparts in the Old World.
• In Europe, children were subservient to adults
  and dependent on parents.
• This was not always the case in the New World.

27

• In the largely rural nature of the population in
  New France, parents were dependent on the
  childrens labor for economic survival and
  success.
• Therefore, rural and working-class children in
  the New World had considerable independence from
  their parents.
• In the view of the colonial administrators,
  parental authority was significantly undermined
  by this arrangement and this lack of authority
  was evidenced in young peoples behaviors.

28
Causes and solutions An Era of Control and
Punishment

• Another identified issue concerned the fur trade
  an extremely lucrative business at this time.
• The system of inheritance in place at the time,
  dictated that only the eldest son could inherit
  family farms.
• Other children had to look elsewhere for a
  livelihood.

29

• The fur trade provided this opportunity for many
  young men as well as promising freedom, adventure
  and a lucrative career.
• According to Carrigan (1991), the fur trade was
  rife with fraud, immorality, theft, assault, and
  murder and teenagers probably contributed their
  fair share to the lawlessness (pg.204).

30

• Another very real source of problems came from
  the active promotion of immigration to the New
  World.
• Impoverished Europeans had been lured to the New
  World with promises of a better, more prosperous
  life.
• However, once they arrived, many found
  unemployment, sickness, destitution, or death.

31

• Untold quantities of children found themselves in
  desperate circumstances because of the hardships
  faced by their parents in the New World.
• Some parents died while others simply abandoned
  their children.

32

• In the 18th century, a variety of measured were
  proposed as solutions to youth crime.
• More schools, more priests, and confinement to
  settled parts of the colony were as informal
  solutions uniquely suited to the political,
  social, and economic structures of this time,
  other proposals such as fines and punishments for
  parents and offenders, military justice, and an
  increase of garrison troops has a familiar modern
  ring to them.

33
A Question of Immorality the 19th Century

• Urban problems associated with immigration and
  poverty continued and worsened throughout the
  19th century.
• The Irish famine exacerbated the orphan problem
  in Canada by increasing the number of people
  emigrating to the New World.
• By the mid-1800s, British and Canadian
  authorities had implemented policies to send
  Britains orphaned, poor, and destitute children
  to Canada as indentured servants.

34
Definition

• Indentured servant a bonded laborer - a laborer
  under contract to work for an employer for a
  specific amount of time, about 7-8 years, to pay
  off a passage to a new country or home.
• Typically the employer provided little if any
  monetary pay, but was responsible for
  accommodation, food, other essentials, and
  training.
• Upon completion of the term of the contract the
  laborer sometimes received a lump sum payment
  such as a parcel of land and was free to farm or
  take up trade of his own.

35

• Between 1883 and 1903, more than 95,000 children
  came to Canada under the sponsorship of child
  immigration agencies.
• Many of these children found only a life of
  misery and harsh working conditions in Canada.
• Some children abandoned their contracts (a
  punishable offence) which left them dependent on
  their own resources for survival.

36

• Life was also very challenging for the poor in
  Victorian Canada.
• Many did not have work, and those who were
  fortunate enough to secure employment were
  often at the mercy of unscrupulous employers.
• What factor might have contributed to being at
  the mercy of employers?

37

• Girls were especially vulnerable.
• Those working as domestics and servants for
  shopkeepers were often forced to service male
  customers in order to keep their jobs.
• They were not free to leave the job because they
  would forfeit a letter of reference without which
  they would not be able to secure another job.

38
The Victorian Public Issue

• By the mid-1800s, the urban middle-class in North
  America began to voice concerns about the
  morality of the poor and destitute.
• Various urban relief agencies were created in
  cities across the continent to address issues
  such as illiteracy, prostitution, alcohol abuse,
  juvenile delinquency, and family squalor.

39

• The discourse surrounding those agencies and
  their activities served to define problems, their
  causes, and seemingly appropriate solutions.
• During the second half of the 19th century, the
  issue of youth crime seemed to focus on the issue
  of morality.

40

• High levels of poverty and the accompanying
  destitution brought on by a lack of employment
  opportunities and severe working conditions meant
  that high numbers of children and young people
  were spending a significant portion of their days
  on the streets where they engaged in begging,
  stealing, and selling whatever they could to make
  a living.

41

• The public issue however was not poverty.
• It was the morality of the impoverished working
  class.
• The parents of these children were considered to
  be immoral and unable and/or unwilling to control
  their children.
• Much of the morality discourse about youth
  problems centered around discussions about
  children on the streets and what could be done
  about them.

42

• Young women on the streets were also the focus of
  grave concern.
• However, their safety was not the issue or
  concern.
• Instead the focus was on the perceived danger to
  their morality.

43
Causes and Solutions An Era of Social Reform

• A reform movement swept across North America in
  the later half of the 19th century.
• The fundamental elements of this movement were a
  focus on the individual, a wide-spread belief in
  the goodness of humanitarian sentiments, and a
  belief in the ability of the state and
  professionals to reform individuals.

44

• This, in essence, marked the emergence of the
  rehabilitative philosophy.
• Reformers argued that it made no sense to fight
  evil with evil by imprisoning and punishing
  criminal offenders.
• Instead it would much more effective in the
  long-run to fight evil with good by attempting to
  rehabilitate individuals who had committed crimes.

45

• This reform policy applied most readily to
  children and young people.
• Child savers found it easy to believe that if
  young enough, a child could be saved from a
  life of crime through interventions designed to
  correct the factors believed to influence
  children in the development of criminal ways.

46

• Along with this belief came the conclusion that
  placing children in prison with adult criminals
  was not the way to combat the problem of youth
  crime.
• Prisons were viewed by many as schools of crime
  where children would associate with, and pick up
  the habits of, hardened adult criminals.

47

• One hundred years earlier, it had been argued
  that improper parenting was the cause of youth
  problems.
• By the end of the 19th century improper parenting
  was again emerging in public discourse as the
  primary cause of youth crime.
• However, this time, the claims took on another
  dimension.

48

• Youth problems were no longer attributed to a
  lack of parental discipline of loss of authority.
• Instead, neglectful and/or immoral parents were
  blamed for youth problems and criminal behaviors.
• Poor, working-class parents were viewed as
  inadequate or as bad role models for their
  children.
• Sound familiar?

49

• By the end of the 19th century, the juvenile
  delinquent had been born.
• Growing up on the street became the subject of
  public condemnation and regulation and a
  life-style a street culture had become the
  most common definition of juvenile delinquency
  (Houston, 1982, p.131).

50
The Era of the Juvenile Delinquent The 20th
Century

• The turn of the century saw continued increases
  in population and in the rapid growth of cities.
• This was accompanied by a variety of social
  issues, including increases in youth crime.
• Simply put, as cities grew and commercial
  activities expanded so did the opportunities for
  criminal activities and different types of crime.

51

• Statistics for all of Canada indicate dramatic
  increases in youth crime rates throughout the
  20th century.
• Convictions of children under 16 increased by
  over 124 percent between 1911 and 1921, and by
  over 67 percent between 1921 and 1931.
• During the 1920s, drug use and drug dealing
  surfaced as a social issue and led to a number of
  arrests and convictions of young people in Canada.

52

• Increases in the numbers of youth involved in
  criminal activities do not necessarily mean that
  young people were or are behaving in a more
  criminal manner.
• As the number of people in a population
  increases, the amount of crime will also increase
  simply because there are more people to engage in
  criminal behavior.

53

• A comparative technique is to examine what
  proportion of all crime is accounted for by youth
  people.
• In 1972, juveniles accounted for 19.5 of all
  persons charged with Criminal Code offences.
• They accounted for 32.2 by 1980.
• In 1989, young people under the age of 18 were
  responsible for 22 of all Criminal Code charges.

54

• This had decreased to 19 in 1999, and to 17 in
  2003.
• As we can see, while there have been variations
  in the percentages, we see that youth represent a
  relatively small percentage of offenders when
  compared to adults.
• And this number appears to be decreasing in the
  last few years.

55
A Sociological Perspective on Youth Crime

• A sociological perspective is different from
  other perspectives, like a psychological one for
  example, because we attempt to place the
  individual into a larger context in order to
  better understand behavior.
• The individuals history, family, school, or
  neighborhood become important

56

• But this interest leads to further questions
  about these factors that also need to be
  understood in a context.
• The history of the family, the structure of
  government, and how that regulates family, or the
  culture, economy, polity, and philosophy of
  Canadian or western society, and the impact of
  all of these factors on family structure and
  dynamics.

57

• Therefore, sociological questions about crime
  including youth crime range from exploring why
  individuals behave as they do, by examining the
  family, school, or peers, to questions about
  crime in a global context.
• Questions about crime also include questions
  about the meaning of crime, how we talk about it,
  and define it, how we respond to it and regulate
  it, and how we think about both.

58

• What is important from this perspective revolves
  around the nature and dynamics of public issues
  because their dynamics serve to frame what is
  problematic.
• The main questions concern why youth crime is a
  public issue and how it is problematized.

59
Youth Crime as a Public Issue

• Public issues including youth crime are
  influenced more by structural, social,
  demographic, and political factors than by actual
  criminal behavior.
• As discussed earlier, children made up a
  significant portion of the population in Upper
  and Lower Canada.

60

• Prior to industrialization, life expectancy was
  considerably lower than it is now and as a result
  more than 50 of the population was often under
  the age of 25.
• By the 19th century, these population proportions
  began to change and these demographic shifts have
  been used to partially explain why the deviant
  behavior of children came to be viewed
  differently by adults.

61

• These demographic shifts stimulated structural
  changes such as legislation restricting child
  labor and enforced compulsory schooling which
  had consequences for the social status of
  children.
• As children were moved out of factories they
  became a sedentary population and a surplus
  population.

62

• Simply put, they were no longer useful as
  laborers and producers.
• This resulted in a shift in their social status
  and position within their communities and
  families from an economic asset to a economic
  liability.
• They became dependent on adults for their
  survival.

63
And now?

• Children and youth are subordinate to adult
  authority.
• They are not permitted such adult rights as
  holding decision-making positions, working for a
  wage (before a certain age) obtaining credit,
  getting married, or engaging in adult pleasures.
• This means that young people are not only
  dependent but are marginal to adult society and
  exist on the periphery.

64

• Adults not only control youth through their
  dependent and marginalized status, it is the
  adult who defines the meaning of youth who they
  are, their place in society, and their purpose.
• Youth represent, for the adult, the mirror of
  society (Rush, 1992) and reflect both what
  adults wish for and what they fear.

65

• As Rush sums up, increases in youth crime are
  indicative of impending social doom (1992,
  p.24).
• BUT WAIT We have discovered that youth crime
  has not necessarily gone up. Why do we insist on
  thinking that is has and that youth are more
  dangerous now than before?!

66
Back to the Role of the Media

• Media play a crucial role in defining youth as a
  dangerous class in large part because of the
  type and frequency of the coverage they provide
  on youth.
• We must also consider that people with only a bit
  of information about a particular crime are more
  fearful and punitive than those with more
  information.

67

• Therefore the media play a crucial role in
  constructing youth crime into a social issue
  (Hartnagel Baron, 1995, p.56).
• Sensationalist media coverage of youth crime
  easily arouses public fear and moral indignation.
• Schissel (1997) posits that media reporting does
  much more than simply sensationalize.

68

• He argues that it presents certain groups like
  the poor and marginalized as dangerous people
  from whom law-abiding citizens need police
  protection.
• Criminologists have identified a variety of ways
  in which media promote panic, hatred, and fear
  about youth.
• One of the most important ways this occurs is
  through decontexualization.

69

• Crimes are always, by the limiting nature of
  media (especially newspapers), discussed out of
  context.
• Context is provided by the journalist, often in a
  manner that generates a number of emotions fear,
  moral outrage, despair, panic, and hatred.
• The message in these stories are also
  decontextualized by what is missing.

70

• Stories of youth crime seldom presents the views
  of youth advocates, rather we hear the voices of
  police officers and Crown prosecutors, victims,
  and irate individuals.
• In this way media discourse is extremely powerful
  in promoting the law-and-order agenda and
  reinforcing a sense that nothing can be done
  about youth crime but to implement more punitive
  measures of control.

71
Conclusion

• What is clear to us it that how Canadians
  perceive, define, and respond to youth crime has
  changed over the last century.
• At the turn of the 19th century, the public view
  of youth crime was of delinquents engaged in
  juvenile delinquency.
• One hundred years later, the view was of young
  offenders engaged in youth crime.

72

• Now, at the turn of the 21st century a new frame
  is emerging.
• The Youth Criminal Justice Act is set to frame
  the issue as one of youth criminals engaged in
  unlawful activities.

73
Discussion questions for chapter one

1. Can we answer questions about the severity of
   youth crime today compared to the past?
2. Should the media be prevented from the
   reproduction of materials that reinforce and
   perpetuate harmful views of marginalized groups
   and individuals?
3. Who has the most realistic view of youth crime
   and justice the law and order group or youth
   advocates?