CC200
Youth Justice
The Rise and Fall of Delinquency
Chapter One
The Public Issue
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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.
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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”.
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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.
Questions to consider
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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’.
Two Sides to the Same Old Debate
1995-2005
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Part of the Liberal federal government’s 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.
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The core of the debate centered around the
question of whether the YOA effectively
controlled youth crime.
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The public was clearly divided into two camps –
youth advocates and the law-and-order
advocates.
Youth Advocate Position
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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.
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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.
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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.
The Law-and-Order Argument
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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.
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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.
Youth were a problem because:
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They were said to lack respect.
They lacked a sense of responsibility.
They were increasingly involved in violent
criminal behavior.
The YOA was problematic because:
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Youth could not be identified.
Youth were not punished for their crimes.
Youth had more rights than their victims.
Youth were too protected by the YOA.
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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?
“The Good Old Days”
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Perhaps the most basic assumption influencing
public views regarding youth crime is the notion
that today’s 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.
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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.
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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.
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So, what have we discovered?
Lawless and Disobedient Youth: 17th
and 18th Centuries.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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In 1672 a 13 year old girl who had helped her
parents murder her husband escaped execution
because of her age.
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Instead, she was required to watch the execution
of her parents.
Colonial Public Issue
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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.
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In the largely rural nature of the population in New
France, parents were dependent on the children’s 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 people’s behaviors.
Causes and solutions: An Era of
Control and Punishment
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
A Question of Immorality: the 19th
Century
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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 Britain’s orphaned, poor,
and destitute children to Canada as indentured servants.
Definition
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
The Victorian Public Issue
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Causes and Solutions: An Era of
Social Reform
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 lifestyle – a street culture – had become the most
common definition of juvenile delinquency
(Houston, 1982, p.131).
The Era of the Juvenile Delinquent :
The 20th Century
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
A Sociological Perspective on Youth
Crime
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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 individual’s history, family, school, or
neighborhood become important…
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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.
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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.
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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.
Youth Crime as a Public Issue
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
And now?
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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.
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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.
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As Rush sums up, increases in youth crime are
indicative of “impending social doom” (1992,
p.24).
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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?!
Back to the Role of the Media
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Conclusion
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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.
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Now, at the turn of the 21st century a new frame
is emerging.
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The Youth Criminal Justice Act is set to frame
the issue as one of youth criminals engaged in
unlawful activities.
Discussion questions for chapter one
1.
2.
3.
Can we answer questions about the severity of
youth crime today compared to the past?
Should the media be prevented from the
reproduction of materials that reinforce and
perpetuate harmful views of marginalized
groups and individuals?
Who has the most realistic view of youth
crime and justice: the law and order group or
youth advocates?