Chapter 3 - the "Facts" of Youth Crime Flashcards
Charges laid for behaviours that are not generally considered to be criminal (failure to appear in court).
Administrative Charges
Offences that involve interference with the administration of justice. These can criminalize youth more than neccessary because of net widening.
Administrative Offences
Statistics on crime and other social behaviour are deemed so when they are grouped into categories that make it impossible to match individuals on other characteristics.
Aggregated
- “The Safe Streets and Communities Act”
- A Conservative majority introduced controversial changes to the YCJA
- Protection of public was primary goal
- The massive omnibus bill gave additional powers to correctional officers.
- The goal was to
- simplify pretrial detention guidelines
- redefine serious offences to those punishable by 5 years custody
- expand definition of violent offence
- add deference and denunciation to principles.
- It created more avenues for tougher sentencing and record keeping, thus changing the nature of the YCGA to a much more punitive act.
Bill C-10
Refers to a hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship between executions and an increase in the homicide rate. This hypothesis proposes this relationship occurs because executions diminish the public’s respect for life. Represents the opposite of a deterrent effect
Brutalization Effect
Compiles youth court data and publishes summaries for country on a yearly basis
Centre for Justice Statistics (and Department of Justice)
Refers to statistics that indicate the rate at which police process criminal incidents as charged offences.
Clearance Rates
A general or abstract term that refers to a class or group of more specific terms (“crime” refers to any number of specific behaviours”).
Concept
- Kept by individual courts; don’t measure youth crime, just those dealt with by courts.
- These are normally not open to public scrutiny
- The Centre for Justice Statistics (& dept. of Justice) compiles youth court data and publishes summaries for country on a yearly basis
- Problematic to make comparisons across years given provincial differences
Court Statistics
Describe changes between the JDA, YOA, and YCJA with regard to crime
- We can examine crime rates as related to historic policies
- Higher crime rates under the YOA are likely the result of changes in legislation rather than increases in offending among youth
- The YCJA has resulted in increased diversion and lower charge rates
- Measures of severity add a new interpretive layer to statistics
Describe the Crime Funnel
A Statistics Canada categorization scheme for classifying police crime statistics as property, violent, and “other”.
Crime Index
- An index that assigns a weight to each offence based on its seriousness and the proportion of prison sentences. Measures how much crime is taking place at any time/place to be compared against another time/place)
Crime Severity Index (CSI)
“Aging out”
In the field of criminology, it is generally defined as the cessation of offending or other antisocial behavior.
Desistance
Knowledge that is based on observation, experience, or experiment rather than on theory or philosophy.
Empirical
A method in which research is conducted outside of a laboratory, in the setting where the behaviour of interest is occurring.
Field Research
sensationalistic focus not representative of reality. It can create a sense that crime is a larger problem than it really is.
Media waves
Used to describe the effects of providing alternatives to incarceration or diversion programs to direct offenders away from court. Results in a greater number of individuals being controlled by the criminal justice system; many fear trial who likely would be found innocent and agree to diversion programs.
Net-widening
Describe Problems with Measuring
- Lying (malingering): about crime involvement and degree of victimization
- Recalling: Subjects may not recall victimization or involvement in crime
- Telescoping: people can think events were more recent than they were
In Behavioural Science, refers to the extent to which variable measurement and research finding can be or have been repeated.
Reliability
A prediction or assumption that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
A criminology questionaire survey in which individuals are asked to report on their involvement in criminal or delinquent activities.
Self-Report Survey
- Usually government agencies mandated to perform various functions in the justice system, such as police, courts, and correctional institutions.
- These agencies produce their own reports about certain aspects of youth crime and are interpreted by them.
- The nature of the data, while standardized depends somewhat on subjective aspects of these agencies; police blitzing youth violence in the downtown can raise charge/arrest rates due to a higher police presence.
Social-Control Agencies
- The media: fuels moral panics
- Police statistics: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), and UCR2 (victim/offender)
- Court statistics (court process, school records,
Field Research
- Self-report surveys
- Victimization surveys
Sources of Youth Crime Data
Stat Warning
Stats don’t interpret themselves, we do
A problem faced by researchers conducting self-report or victimization surveys. People tend to lump offences that may have occurred several years ago into something that occurred “last year”.
Telescoping
Events investigated by the police as potentially criminal offences that are determined not to be offences.
Unfounded Offences
The extent to which research variables have been measured in a way that is consistent with the theoretical concept, or what was intended.
Validity
A survey questionnaire that asks individuals whether they have been victimized over a particular time period, and in what ways.
Victimization Survey
Describe Youth Crime Severity
- property crime is the most common
- violent offences are less common but attract the most attention
- sexual assault cases are rare but a concern
- Murder is rare among youth but also receives attention.
Policies related to the intolerance of behaviour that is considered undesirable.
Zero-Tolerance Policies
