Chapter 2 lecture notes

All official accounts/records come from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics

unofficial sources are considered extremely important because they capture the dark figures of crime that go undetected and/or unreported.

in essence, a crime is only committed if a person between12-17 commits a criminal code offence

what is considered a crime is often considered by those in power

• eg. the use of weed in Canada was once considered a crime, but now it is not. Power holders can influence the definition and criteria of crime.

Also, harmful but NOT criminal activity would go undetected

reporting rates: as noted, official statistics don’t encompass all crimes. there is also that “dark figure”. specific jurisdictions and social and economic factors also influence reporting rates (and police deciding what to report as well)

in pre-confederation, accounts were mostly limited to newspaper sources and eye-witness observation

higher crime rates in urban centres (from what we know)

often familial problems were associated with conduction of the youth crime

this called for politicians to control the youth. they implemented compulsory schooling as a form of “child saving”

this was based on the family environment forming youth delinquency, so they made schooling compulsory as this would be a “controlled environment”

this ofc speaks to the social spect of crime and the measurement of crime, and questioning who drives and who determines what is crime.

towards the 1960s juvenile delinquency increased

public perceptions of a problem with youth crime led to pressure on politicians

the idea was that society was changing and called for new solutions.

the (1,2,3) are the ways in which we can measure youth crime (number of youth charged, rate of youth charged per 100,000, and the % of change in total youth rate between reporting year and previous year)

• rate allows for comparisons between jurisdictions and % of change in periods of time

  • this provides insight into an increase or decrease of youth crime

there is a gender difference in youth crime

• young boys are more likely to be charged in youth crime offences

perhaps gendered stereotypes influence the types of crimes that are being committed by children of different genders.

younger youth as a whole commit more property offences

the text forgot to really mention the influence of race and sexual orientation

the “against” and “support” refer to the documentation of race and race-related data

there is a debate about whether violent crime is increasing or not. some say yes, some say no, and some say it is stable.

But the seriousness of violent crime IS increasing (the CSI measures this)

while youth violent crime as a whole may be stable, certain types of violent crimes are on the rise, like youth homicide rates

these non-violent crimes are far more prevalent than violent crime in youth (but media doesn’t show this as much)

non-violent crimes are indeed declining since the 90s

when we look at unofficial data in comparison to official data, the unofficial data indicates that there may be higher levels of crime in youth populations

victimization surveys demonstrate that youth populations have a high victimization rate (especially in areas of bullying, street youth, indigenous youth, etc…)

so while official stats say that there are huge variations based on gender, we are indeed seeing in victimization servers that these rates are more similar than thought. boys and girls report being the victims of crimes at similar rates

• therefore, its important to keep exploring their experiences of being a victim of a crime

victimization is high in youth populations

therefore, we should not only view official data but also explore unofficial data sources to get a broader picture of the experiences of youth crime in Canada