Chapter 12 - What do we know? Where are we going?

Question 1

Circles ***

Answer 1

• Has origins in Aboriginal communities (also Mennonite communities)
• Used in the YCJA: youth justice committees, sentencing circles, conferencing (family group or sentencing conferences)
• Peace Making Circles: They take a macro perspective and operate under the presumption that the entire community is responsible for crime and for rehabilitation/reintegration.

Question 2

Looks at the specific ways in which a community can address inequities and injustices, and has less of a focus on offenders.

Answer 2

Community Change Model

Question 3

Children and youth who have a history of movement from the children’s mental health or child welfare system into the youth justice system.

Answer 3

Cross-Over Kids

Question 4

Refers here to belief systems about power differences and how they are maintained and reinforce the interests of the powerful.

Answer 4

Hegemonic

Question 5

How to Approach the Problem of Youth Crime ***

Answer 5

• It is mostly a moral panic
• It is socially constructed
• It is not a “new” social problem
• Addressing who is “at risk” of being a criminal may be an effective proactive approach to deal with the problem. Look at “at risk groups”, not to stigmatize or stereotype but to help prevent.

Question 6

The precesses by which laws are changed.

Answer 6

Law Reform

Question 7

A form of government that prioritizes setting targets and performance indicators to audit program efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Answer 7

Neoliberal

Question 8

New Ideas in Youth Justice

Answer 8

• Restorative justice is becoming an important part of our juvenile justice system
• Ontario program developed in 1974 – Victim Offender Reconciliation Brogram
  
  • Involve meetings between the offender, victim, and a trained mediator to determine a restitution agreement in minor, usually first time offences. VORPs

• Peacemaking circles • Sentencing circles/conferences
• Transformative justice • Community change model

Question 9

New Issues***

Answer 9

• Age and adult accountability: Contrary to UN specifications, Canada continues to have youth held in adult institutions in some cases
• Pretrial detention: continuing to increase with the YCJA
• Release conditions: criminalize more youth because release conditions are too restrictive for teens to live up to
• Parental rights/supports: The YCJA does not adequately support parents who are trying to be effective parents
• Cross-over kids: The justice system has failed to address the needs of those who start in the welfare/foster care system (under age 12) and become involved in the youth justice system.

​Aboriginal youth issues

• Racism
• Effects of colonialism
• Cultural differences in meaningful justice
• Suicide, addictions, and other social problems
• Blurring/blending of child-welfare and youth justice system involvement (cross-over kids)

Aboriginal youth are overrepresented at all stages and levels of the Criminal Justice System. The UN has continued to insist that Canada do a better job addressing this. Overrepresentation and the underlying issues that have precipitated it.

Question 10

Ongoing Issues ***

Answer 10

• Law reform: The YCJA was significantly changed by Bill C-10. Under bill C-10 there has been a significant shift towards a youth justice system that more closely resembles adult system of justice —conflicts with UN Declaration on Rights of Child. Minimum sentences & changed rights (some argue to violate human rights).
• Age: Pressures continue to lower the minimum and maximum age of inclusion
• Privacy: The YCJA definition must be reviewed due to social networking sites & other technology (blogs, texts, etc.).
• Parental responsibility: continues to be debated & currently several provinces have parental responsibility legislation
• Currently, parents in some provinces may be asked to repay legal aid costs if their child goes to court.

Question 11

An alternative Aboriginal method of resolving criminal conflicts, based on a healing philosophy.

Answer 11

Peacemaking Circle

Question 12

Policies and programs designed to curtail certain behaviours (criminal acts).

Answer 12

Prevention

Question 13

A concept that allows an understanding of racism that goes beyond overt expressions and discriminatory actions of individuals, referring more to underlying assumptions in discourse and practice.

Answer 13

Racialized

Question 14

Restorative Justice

Answer 14

• Guiding set of principles, not a practice.
• practices are sentencing circles, community conferences, VORPs, etc.
• Usually described in opposition to traditional model which is backward looking (punative for what you did).
• A justice model seeks to repair harm caused by crime.
• Centralization of power is a problem (leaving it to police), when in reality the community creates environments that create crime, not in abstract place where experts hang out.
• Victims, offenders, and communities all share in the healing process
• There are different labels for programs that use restorative principles

Question 15

A justice model that focuses on the harm caused by crime and that seeks through responses to repair the damage done to offenders, victims, and communities.

Answer 15

Restorative Justice Model

Question 16

Solutions to Cycle of Juvenile Justice

Answer 16

• Solutions may lie in being proactive rather than reactive:
• Solution #1: look to restorative justice programs
• Solution #2: look to anti-bullying programs
• Solution #3: addressing the real sources of crime: victimized youth who then become youth criminals

Question 17

The Current YCJA system

Answer 17

• Reflects an increasing neoliberal approach to justice.
• The YCJA is the rules and regulations portion of juvenile justice
• We must also consider the youth, the behaviour, and our beliefs, assumptions, and philosophy around juvenile justice, which direct youth justice legislation
• More wholistic approach that considers the individual.

Question 18

Transformative Justice ***

Answer 18

• Tied to Mennonite and Quaker communities
• Critical of some aspects of restorative justice
• Ruth Morris wants process include social inequalities existing prior to criminal act
• Using somewhat different language the Transformative Justice model (Ruth Morris) suggests that restoration is misleading and suggests to victims that they may have their lives restored to their former capacity. She argues this is not possible but that victims could work towards a positive transformation instead. She also looks at the use of the term ‘restorative’ in relation to offenders; she suggests that no-one would wish that they could be restored to their former capacity either. For both, there is racism, classism, disempowerment and marginalization at work which we must transform and move beyond.

Question 19

Entails addressing the social inequities that existed before a crime was committed.

Answer 19

Transformative Justice Model

Question 20

Where are we now?

Answer 20

• Crime rates are down mid 80s-mid 90s. High child abductions in 80s, HIV pressures of the 80s
• Moral panics about youth crime and violence persist
• Media plays role in perpetuating myths of youth crime. Out of control youths with no concern for others & violent.
• The justice system is responsive to grassroots moral panics as well as to national and international standards
• Programming initiatives are ever-changing and often based on models outside of Canada. Video from beginning (could have changed course of young man’s life
• Responses to youth crime and delinquency are sometimes based on outside disciplines such as medical and community planning models. Medical model sometimes strips identity of patients.
• The new science of crime prevention through risk assessment is taking hold (took hold long time ago).
• The cost-effectiveness of programs is now being considered more closely. Pixels for Pistols don’t get the guns we want to be rid of really — no effect on street weaponry. Look at best practices and use empirical methods. Constant reevaluation and testing because society changes. Is crime reduced and is it doing what we thought it was going to do. Holding a variable constant and manipulating another to see if the effect is accurate.

Question 21

Youth Scripts

Answer 21

• Determine how various groups (race, class, gender) treated in justice system
• Female crime, for ex: is tied to good girl/bad girl scripts. Extreme bias in sex crime area — women charged, men get option to buy themselves out and go to John school ($400). Street Walking most vulnerable (call girl least). Good girls don’t come into conflict with the law and don’t do sex work.
• The defendant in the Reena Virk case used this good girl/bad girl dichotomy.
• The accused used this script in her defence; she had baby to help out. Just finally admitted what she did was wrong.