Young criminals in Canada victims of federal legislation - The Globe and Mail

Young criminals in Canada victims of federal legislation - The Globe and Mail

"Canada incarcerates more convicted youth than almost any similarly industrialized country.

And new federal crime legislation is poised to drive those numbers higher, even though imprisoned teens are statistically less likely to get jobs after they’re released and, if anything, are more likely to reoffend.

Years after enacting laws that have been successful in reducing youth incarceration rates, Canada still sends five times more of its convicted teens into custody than England and Wales, according to data obtained from the British justice ministry and Statistics Canada’s justice arm.

At the crux of the debate is how to treat Canada’s youngest criminals. They represent a complex cohort in a diverse country, spread out across divergent provincial justice systems. The current tool is the nine-year-old Youth Criminal Justice Act, a law meant to strike a delicate balance between getting tough on repeat, violent offenders while ensuring other youth charged with crimes stayed out of jail.

It has succeeded in lowering incarceration rates, although Canada is still high compared with other OECD countries – a comparison many argue is misleading given differences in the way countries measure those stats.

But even its proponents argue the resources needed to create alternative sentencing and rehabilitation, let alone prevent teens from getting in trouble in the first place, aren’t there. Critics point to harrowing cases of youth crime and argue the law’s too lax. As it is, the system’s still torn between a focus on punishment and deterrence on one hand, and prevention and rehabilitation on the other."