Youth In Conflict With the Law - Exam 1

What percent of Canada’s population is under 24 years of age?

29%

Dark Figure of Crime:

Incidents of crime or delinquency that go undetected or unreported by the police

“At-risk” Youth:

Young people who are at risk of offending or being victimized due to various social, family, and/or personal factors

Juvenile Delinquency:

Used in the 1908 Juvenile Delinquents Act to describe any child who violates any provision of the criminal code or any federal or provincial statute

Criminal Justice System:

The agencies of social control which define and react to those behaviours that fall within the purview of criminal law

The Criminal Justice System consists of 3 institutions:

1. Police

2. Courts

3. Corrections

What institution of the criminal justice system lays charges as defined under the Criminal Code?

The Police

Three sources of knowledge:

1. Official Data

2. Unofficial Data

3. Media

Official data:

Records of youth crime reported by the various social control agencies (police, youth courts, youth corrections)

Attempts to portray crime as a pattern through uniform descriptions

The CCJS

The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics

A branch of Statistics Canada

Collects offender and offence data from the police, courts, and corrections for administrative purposes

Produces regular reports to the public.

One type of survey: Uniform Crime Report (UCR)

What province has the most gang-related homicides?

Manitoba

What is the most common non-violent crime for youth?

Property crime committed by 12-13 year old males

The YCJA

The Youth Criminal Justice Act

Replaced the Young Offenders Act in 2003

Canada had the highest youth incarceration rate in the world at the time

Since the enactment of YCJA, the rates have declined

Unofficial Data

Refers to data that are collected and usually published by private or independent researchers

The primary data-collection techniques are self-report surveys and victimization surveys

General Findings of Self-report surveys

*Uncovers the dark figure of crime

Youth crime is more common than official statistics would indicate

Serious delinquency is relatively rare (predominantly older males)

Female youth report less participation in crime

Youth involved in delinquency more often report having consumed alcohol or drugs or having delinquent friends

Why are victimization surveys useful?

Show that the profiles of victims are similar to those of offenders

General Findings of Victimization Surveys

Victims are disproportionately young males from a working-class background

Youth are at a higher risk of victimization compared to adults

Between 15 to 24 is the most victimized age group

Crime is “report-sensitive”:

Relies on reporting practices of the public/victims

Crime is “policing-sensitive”:

The level of police enforcement in the area will effect statistics

Crime is “definition-sensitive”:

Legal definitions of crime change over time in different contexts

Crime is “media-sensitive”:

Media portrayals and social media effect public opinions, attitudes, and assumptions about youth crime and youth offenders

Risk Factors:

Negative influences or circumstances in the lives of individuals or their communities that may increase the presence of crime, victimization and/or fear of crime in a given community

Risk factors for becoming an offender:

Harsh parenting discipline

Lack of parental involvement

Parental criminality

Child abuse or neglect

Exposure to domestic violence

Large family sizes

Lower social class

Children who witness violence are more likely to:

Be involved in aggression at school or indirect violence like bullying

History of Youth Crime trends:

Can be divided into three eras:

1. pre-confederation

2. state intervention

3. the twentieth century

Pre-confederation era of youth crime:

Children were afforded much freedom, which resulted in hooliganism

Also caused by families coming to the Americas, but experiencing economic hardship

A common characteristic among young offenders is parental neglect and/or maltreatment

When did Stats Canada start collecting official data on juvenile delinquency?

In 1876

State Intervention era of youth crime:

A dramatic increase in youth crime is attributed to the deterioration in economic conditions

Urbanization and industrialization were changing how people lived, children were less supervised

Universal public education was the state’s first step to alleviate delinquency

When did Ontario make school attendance compulsory?

In 1871

*For 7-12 year olds - four months out of the year

The Twentieth Century era of youth crime:

Introduced juvenile courts and more efficient systems of responding to juvenile crime

There was a 200 percent increase in youth convictions from 1911 to 1940

A shift toward formal attention to young offenders

There was a general erosion of social cohesion, and the influence of the mass media was everywhere

The YOA

The Young Offenders Act was introduced in 1984

Characteristics of Today’s Young Offenders

Youth comprise 7 % of Canada’s population and comprise 13 % of accused offenders

The youth crime rate has been falling steadily since 2006

Gender and youth crime

Males commit more crimes than females

Males commit sexual assault, drug possession, attempted murder, and weapons offences

Females commit common assault, administrative offences, and shoplifting

Age and youth crime

The rate of accused increases from age 12, peaks at 17, and then declines

Younger people are more likely to engage in violent crimes

Older youth are more likely to commit administrative offences

Since the 1990s, younger people appear to be:

Getting involved in delinquent activities at an earlier age than ever before

Crime Severity Index (CSI):

Introduced by Statistics Canada, uses a waiting system to measure offences according to their seriousness

Introduced in 2009

Each type of offence is assigned a “weight” which is determined from the sentences handed down by courts

Violent Youth Crime across the provinces

Prince Edward Island had the lowest rate of violent youth crimes in 2021

Saskatchewan had the highest

Statistics between 2017 and 2021

The overall youth crime rate declined by 35% between 2017 and 2021

The violent crime rate dropped by nearly 50% in the same period

Bill C-4 (Sebastien's Law):

The bill allows young offenders who have committed serious violent acts or are serious repeat offenders to be detained during pre-trial detention

The bill further allows the courts to publish the names of some young criminals, such as sex offenders, to protect the public

Recidivism:

Repetition of criminal or delinquent behaviour

Can be measured through official sources or through self-report surveys

Indigenous youth are three times more likely to:

Be victimized than non-Indigenous youth

Young people are almost 15 times more likely to:

Be a victim of a violent crime (than seniors 65 and older)

Media plays a role in the:

Distortion of crime knowledge

*It encourages the perception that crime is random

*It creates unnecessary fears of victimization

*It desensitizes the public to crime, leading to less public concern

Two types of analysis:

Content analysis and social constructionist analysis

Content analysis:

A methodology used to explore whether youth crime in the media is portrayed in a similar way to what we see in official statistics

Objective: see if the media coverage is distorted in comparison to a more objective source of information for argument’s sake

Compared to official statistics and court data

How do you do a content analysis?

You take a sample of media coverage and compare the incidence of its stories to another source of information

Looking for themes such as sensationalism or distortion

Sprott’s study

She compared news coverage in three Toronto newspapers to the Bala and Lille’s Young Offenders Reporting Service over a two year period

Sprott’s Findings

Property crime was reported less often in the news by the Toronto newspapers

(in comparison to violent crime)

There was a difference in the sentencing between reality and what the news said

Implications of Sprott’s study

Violent crime stories get more attention, creating more revenue for companies

The news portrays young people as more dangerous

The news portrays courts as too lenient

The media isn’t educating the public toward how the courts really work

Cultivation Hypothesis:

The hypothesis that the media inundates the public with ideas and images about crime, with the argument being that distorted media coverage often leads people to become more fearful

What comes from the Cultivation Hypothesis?

It creates hostility toward young people, thus resulting in increased surveillance

& it perpetuates stereotypes about youth being irresponsible or irrational

Social Constructionist Analysis:

Concerned with closely analyzing how the media constructs reality

What language are they using, and how are they shaping their stories?

Main themes in Social Constructionist Analysis

1. Presenting violence as a growing social problem (like an epidemic or a plague)

2. Dichotomy between innocent victims and guilty predators who prey on those victims

3. Links between new problems and an existing one

4. Claims-makers (e.g., police, politicians, or advocates) who call for change

Hogeveen

Looked at the implications of media coverage

He analyzed House of Commons debates and media reports in the 1990s

He argued that the media created a category called the “Punishable young offender”

The “Punishable young offender”

A new discursive category that emphasizes protecting the public from risks associated with youth crime

Political discourse constructed a "punishable young offender" to justify harsher youth justice policies

Trends of knowing about youth crime from the media

About 72 percent of people know about crime from the media, compared to 22 percent who know about it from personal experience

The media and the public

The media highlight emotional and violent extremes of crime, influencing public perception and policy. Most people consuming that media call for more punitive measures of justice.

Research supports that the media plays a significant role in shaping public attitudes toward youth crime

The UCR

The Uniform Crime Report Survey

Provides an aggregate count, lumping crime into categories based on reports from over 1,000 separate police detachments from over 200 police forces across Canada

The youth crime rate peaked in:

1991

Youth homicide rates

In 2017, the number of youth aged 12-17 accused of homicide was 53. In 2021, it was 27

Youth homicide rates can vary considerably from one year to the next because of the small number of offences, where any increase looks large

This can lead to a misinterpretation, especially in the media

The decriminalization of cannabis resulted in:

A 94 percent decrease in youth drug offences between 2011 and 2021

The international youth survey

Conducted in over 30 countries

One cycle of the survey (which studied youth in middle school) revealed that 37% of youth had committed acts of delinquency

Over 40% of students reported being victimized

Hogeveen’s Five themes of youth crime media coverage:

1. Editorializing

2. Moral outrage

3. Atrocity tales

4. Problem defining events

5. Valorization of victims