chapter one Flashcards

Question

The YOA was viewed as a problem because it was believed that?

Answer 1

(1) youth could not be identified; (2) youth were not punished for their crimes; (3) youth had more rights than their victims; and (4) youth were too protected by the YOA.

Answer 2

The law-and-order view advocates a “get-tough” approach to young offenders. Law-and-order proponents at the Halifax forum cited a Statistics Canada release reporting an 8 percent increase in youth involvement in violent crime. They were further armed with information about incidences of particularly violent youth crime, readily supplied from news media. These stories usually portrayed the young offender in such cases as remorseless and lacking feeling—the “superpredator”

Answer 3

A process whereby something, someone, or some group is defined as a problem. But in contrast to 10 years earlier, in this case, from a law-and-order perspective, youth involvement in car theft and joyriding was problematized, and the youth himself was described as a “serial car thief,” “a frequent flyer,” someone who was on a “car theft rampage.”

Answer 4

s for the legislation itself, law-and-order views were that the YCJA “goes over- board in reducing custody,” that “there is too much reliance on community punish- ment,” that “kids are getting too many chances,” that “judges can’t jail youth who need it,” that there are “no threats to motivate youth,” and that some kids are “spiralling out of control” and judges “need the ability to lock up kids.”

Answer 5

On the other hand are the views that there is “nothing wrong with the act,” that “at-risk kids need more social supports,” that the problem is “not enough resources from the province to do the job,” and that the problems lie “in communities and schools.”

Answer 6

And that is the theme of this book. To try to understand youth crime with a view to developing more effective responses to youth behaviour before it spirals out of control. An important way of understanding the current situation with regard to youth crime and justice is to know the foundation upon which it is built. Is youth crime worse today than in the past, and how did Canadians understand youth crime and respond to it in earlier centuries?

Answer 7

Perhaps the most basic assumption underlying many public views about youth crime, particularly the law-and-order perspective, is the notion that today’s youth are worse than youth in “the good old days.” Interestingly, every generation of adults seems to remember a time when things were “better” and not what they are “today.” Yet, available crime statistics do not indicate any such period in Canadian history. Canadian crime statistics, as far back as 1885 (see Table 1.2), indicate that young people have always been involved in criminal activity, some of it serious violent crime. Moreover, young people have always been responsible for a considerably smaller amount of criminal activity than adults, and most of their offences have involved petty property crime.

Answer 8

A 19th-century term for prisons based on a philosophy of penitence and punishment to atone for wrongs.

Answer 9

Unfortunately, historical data on youth crime and public responses are not readily available, since youth crime statistics were not always kept in the manner that they are today In the early years of European settlement, crime information was recorded in the reports of colonial administrators.

Answer 10

Some statistics are available for Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec) after Confederation, and slightly more detailed information is available in general reports from city administrators. Prison records provide a source of information on youth crime, but the ages of prisoners were not always recorded. There are no consistent prison records until 1835, the year in which Kingston Penitentiary, the first Canadian prison, opened.

Answer 11

primary data: Research information gathered directly from the original source. secondary data: Research information or data that was originally collected for another purpose.

Answer 12

Beyond these primary data sources, there are a few academic analyses of youth crime that provide secondary data. These analyses are scant because contemporary Canadian scholars and researchers seem to have been far more interested in the justice system than in the actual behaviour of children and youth in Canada's history

Answer 13

Information on youth involvement in crime in Canada during the 17th and 18th centuries is sketchy. Although we can never know the actual incidence of law- breaking among youth during this period, what information is available indicates that concerns were expressed about youth as a problem in the North American colonies as early as the late 17th century.

Answer 14

petty nature. They involved vandalism, petty theft, brawling, swearing, immorality, violations of local ordinances, and the abandonment of indentured service contracts.

Answer 15

Throughout recorded history, children in European society have had a different legal status than adults. Mostly, this meant they had no rights and were at the mercy of their parents and the state. Infanticide, child slavery, and child labour were common. The idea that children had rights as individuals independent of their parents, or that they had a right to protection from adults, did not gain popularity until the 19th century

Answer 16

With regard to crime, from about the 11th century, English common law recognized that a child’s capacity to understand the wrongful- ness of crime was limited. Hence, children under seven were considered to lack the “capacity to commit a crime” (doli incapax)

Answer 17

The issue for colonial administrators in the territories of Canada was the freedom and independence that young people had relative to their counterparts in the Old World

Answer 18

From historical documents of the colonial period, two factors emerge as perceived “causes” of youth crime—parents and the fur trade. Overindulgent parents were often cited by administrators as a reason for youth problems:

Answer 19

Urban problems associated with immigration and poverty continued and worsened throughout the 19th century.

Answer 20

By the mid-1800s, British and Canadian authorities had developed policies to send Britain’s orphaned, poor, and destitute children to Canada as indentured ser- vants. - Between 1873 and 1903, more than 95,000 children came to Canada under the sponsorship of child immigration agencies - While the migra- tion scheme was seen as a means of providing a better life for the children of Britain’s poor and destitute families, many of these children found only a life of misery and harsh working conditions in Canada.

Answer 21

Most of our information on Canadian youth crime from the Victorian period comes from city police records and prison reports. Juvenile institutions were not built until after 1857, so when young offenders were imprisoned they were sent to adult jails. Many incarcerated youth had been convicted of relatively minor offences and many were as young as seven. Throughout the 19th century, it was not uncommon to find children not yet in their teens in city jails as well.

Answer 22

By the mid-1800s, the urban middle class in North America began to express con- cerns about the morality of those who were poor and destitute. Various urban relief agencies sprang up in cities across the continent to address such problems as illiteracy, prostitution, alcohol abuse, juvenile delinquency, and “family squalor” (Fingard, 1989, p. 119). The discourse surrounding those agencies and their activities served to define problems, their “causes,” and seemingly appropriate solutions.

Answer 23

n Halifax, one agency instrumental in bringing social issues to public atten- tion was the Halifax City Mission. Established in 1852, the mission identified three problems—prostitution, the liquor trade, and infanticide—and lobbied the city and provincial governments to take action The criminal activity of young people was also of some concern to the agency. hroughout the latter half of the 1800s, the issue of youth crime seemed to be a moral one. Because of poverty and destitution brought on by a lack of employment and severe working conditions, countless numbers of children and young people were spending a good portion of their lives on city streets, which they worked by begging, stealing, and selling whatever they could to make a living.

Answer 24

The public issue was not poverty and destitution, however. Rather, it was the morality of this impoverished working class. The parents of these children were perceived as immoral and unable or unwilling to control their children. Attitudes toward the poor were very unsympathetic.

Answer 25

According to Rothman (1980), a reform movement swept North America in the latter half of the 19th century. The essential tenets of this movement were a focus on the individual; a widespread belief in the goodness of humanitarian sentiment; and, above all, a belief in the ability of the state and professionals to reform indi- viduals. The emergence of the progressive reform movement marked the birth of rehabilitative philosophy.

Answer 26

A belief that the right treatment can change a person’s attitudes, values, and/or behaviour. Reformers maintained that it made no sense to return “evil with evil” by imprisoning and punishing criminal offenders. They argued that it was far more effective in the long run to return “evil with good” by trying to rehabilitate individuals who had committed crimes.

Answer 27

This reform philosophy applied most readily to children and young people. For the “child savers” it was easy to believe that, if young enough, a child could be “saved” from a life of crime through interventions designed to correct the factors believed to influence children in the development of criminal ways (Platt, 1969a).

Answer 28

Consistent with this idea, the practice of confining children in prison with adults also fell into public disfavour. Prisons were seen by many as “schools of crime,” where children would associate with, and learn the habits of, “hardened” adult criminals.

Answer 29

the Juvenile Delinquents Act made juvenile delinquent a legal status juvenile delinquent: A concept popularized in the Victorian era, referring to children and youth who were considered problematic for a variety of reasons.

Answer 30

recommendations uld associate with, and learn the habits of, “hardened” adult criminals. One of the recommendations of the 1848–1849 Brown Commission report on Kingston Penitentiary was that a separate justice system be created for juveniles. The opening of juvenile institutions at Penetanguishene and Îsle aux Noix was the first of a series of reforms that culminated in the establishment of a separate law governing the misdeeds of children and youth

Answer 31

reformatories A 19th-century term for juvenile prisons that were based on a belief in the ability of prisons to reform or change an individual.

Answer 32

Few seemed to object to separating children from adults, but there was disagreement over how this should be done Some reformers believed that lengthy sentences in reformatories were necessary to rehabilitate young people, while others were opposed to institutionalizing young people, whether in youth or adult prison

Answer 33

improper parenting By the end of the 19th century, improper parenting was once again emerging in the public discourse as the primary “cause” of youth crime. This time around, the claims took on a new dimension. Now, youth problems were attributed not to a lack of parental discipline or a loss of authority, but to neg- lectful or immoral parents. Poor working-class parents were viewed as inadequate or as bad role models for their children (see Box 1.2). The public issue in the latter decades of the 19th century was the moral state of youth and children, in particular those from working-class backgrounds.

Answer 34

A neglected child, the act stated, was any child who was found (1) “begging or receiving alms orthieving...or sleeping at nights inthe open air”; (2) “wandering about at late hours and not having any home or settled place of abode, or proper guardianship”; (3) “associating or dwelling with a thief,drunkard orv agrant” or who “by reason of the neglect or drunkenness or vices of the parents was ‘growing up without salutary parental control and education’ or in cir- cumstances which were exposing him ‘to an idle or dissolute life’”; (4) “in any house of ill fame, or in the company of a reputed prostitite"; and finally (5) “destitute, being an orphan or having a surviving parent” who was “undergoing imprisonment for a crime.”

Answer 35

By the end of the 19th century, the juvenile delinquent had been born, and “growing up on the street became the subject of public condemnation and regulation . . . a life style—a street culture—had become the most common definition of juvenile delin- quency”

Answer 36

The 19th century was also a period of social reform and increasing concerns among urban middle-class Canadians about the welfare of children and the family. As Sutherland (1976) notes in his analysis of Canadian children in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this was a period when English Canada “intensified a century-long effort to impose higher standards of order on itself” (p. 95). Governments at all levels were enacting laws designed to curb immorality and encourage moral behaviour. Drinking and spitting in public were prohibited, as was child labour in factories. Campaigns were waged against alcohol and cigarettes, regular school attendance was required, and vaccinations and child welfare programs were encouraged (Sutherland, 1976, p. 95).

Answer 37

The Victorian child savers were primarily concerned with the welfare of children and families. Thus, their activities and reforms did not focus solely on crime. Of particular concern to reformers were neglected, dependent, and delinquent children (Sutherland, 1976, pp. 97–98). Notions of delinquency came from English common law and applied to children between the ages of 7 and 14 who broke any municipal, provincial, or federal law. This encompassed a broad range of children. Among those considered delinquent were “waifs, arabs, strays, newsboys, hawkers, beggars, habitual truants, and other children of the streets, and children whose parents instructed them in intemperance, vice, and crime” (Sutherland, 1976, p. 97). If it was determined that an accused child aged 7 to 14 was capable of discerning right from wrong and good from evil, then that child could be convicted and suffer the same penalty as an adult, including execution. Youth over 14 were subject to the same law as adults, while chil- dren under 7 were considered unable to distinguish right from wrong. Dependants were children who were considered to be without families, either because they were deemed illegitimate or because they had been abandoned to orphanages (Sutherland, 1976, p. 98). Neglected children were those deemed to be not properly cared for by

Answer 38

Reformers may have identified different types of “problem” children, but they made no distinctions when responding to these children. For the child savers, only the end result mattered, and the desired result was for children to be “saved” from a life of crime. For Victorian reformers, the only difference between a neglected child and a delinquent child was the difference between a “potential” criminal and an “actual” one (Houston, 1972, p. 263). Leon (1977) elaborates:

Answer 39

The turn of the 20th century saw continued increases in population and a rapid growth of cities that was accompanied by a variety of social issues, including increases in youth crime. As cities grew and commercial activities expanded, there were more opportun- ities for criminal activities and for different types of crime.

Answer 40

. The expansion of the railway brought breaches of the Railway Act, the introduction of the automobile brought car theft, and the growth of the banking industry brought increases in bank robberies—all offences engaged in by teenagers as well as adults

Answer 41

Increases in the numbers of youth involved in criminal activity do not neces- sarily mean that young people were or are behaving in a more criminal manner. As the total number of people in a population increases, the amount of crime will also increase simply because there are more people to engage in criminal activity.

Answer 42

Another way of looking at youth crime is to compare standardized rates, which account for differences in overall population size and composition. another comparative technique is to examine what proportion of all crime is accounted for by young people.

Answer 43

Some things about youth crime in Canada have not changed. For example, over the last century in Canada, the sheer volume of official crime has increased, but the overall pattern of youth crime has not

Answer 44

Most youth crime has consisted of minor property crime, with a small proportion involving serious personal injury or death to others

Answer 45

young males

Answer 46

Another thing that has not changed is that most people always seem to think pessimistically about youth crime (and justice)—that youth crime is worse than it actually is, that there is a “crime wave” among the youth population.

Answer 47

On the other hand, there is the widespread “myth of the good old days” that is characteristic of the law-and-order group. More people seem to believe that youth crime is worse today than ever before and that youth no longer respect authority, rather than that “nothing has changed.”

Answer 48

Bernard argued that this myth is “true some of the time and false some of the time.” The problem is that people “believe it without any particular concern about whether it is true. People always like to believe in the ‘good old days,’ whether delinquency was actually better or worse back then” (1992,

Answer 49

As we have seen, the 20th century was the period in Canadian history when the juvenile court was created, and it was also a period of rapid population growth.

Answer 50

. Hence, we should expect increases in criminal activity over time for at least two reasons 1) The Canadian population increased, and a new organization was created specifically to work with children who were involved in criminal and delinquent activity. Schissel’s examination (1997) of Criminal Code charges for youth from 1973 to 1995 clearly indicates that the Young Offenders Act created increased crime rates because more youth were arrested and brought to court than under the Juvenile Delinquents Act (pp. 80–81). 2) Furthermore, as we will see in Chapter 8, changes in policing, juvenile legisla- tion, and administrative practices affect official crime rates, as do public pressures to “crack down on crime.” Therefore, even though official crime statistics show increases in youth crime over the last century, we cannot assume that youth behaviour is any worse now than in past decades.

Answer 51

“Outbreaks” of crime and gang activity are also a matter of interpretation gang activity is often over-reported and exaggerated by both the news media and the police. Contrary to Carrigan’s view, Tanner (1996), a soci- ologist, argues that youth crime and even gang activity are no more or less serious today than they were in the past.

Answer 52

It is important to remember when interpreting official statistics that both the police and the media have a vested interest in crime—it ensures their jobs. For journalists, crime is “news”; for the police, “crime waves” usually mean increased funding for policing activities. Further complicating our attempts at interpretation is that the information available to us is limited and not always comparable from one period to another. Comparing crime statistics from different periods and drawing anything other than tentative conclusions is extremely difficult.

Answer 53

been variously used, depending on which term was used in the original reports. However, the terms are not necessarily meas- uring the same behaviours. Legally speaking, “delinquency” and the “delinquent” young person ceased to exist with the passage of the Young Offenders Act; they were replaced with the terms “youth crime” and “young offenders.” “Youth crime” statistics tend to measure Criminal Code offences, while “delinquency” statistics also include non-criminal “offences” such as incorrigibility.

Answer 54

The argument from the foregoing discussion is that, to a great extent, youth crime is about what people believe it to be, perceive it to be, and this takes us to a discussion of the sociological perspective on youth crime and its use as an organizing com- ponent in this book.

Answer 55

A sociological perspective is different from other perspectives, such as a psychological one, because the sociologist tries to put the individual into a larger context to understand behaviour. The individual’s history, family, school, or neighbourhood become important, but that then leads to questions about the family, school, and neighbourhood that also need to be understood in a context—the his- tory of the family and the structure of government and how that regulates family, or the culture, economy, polity, and philosophy of Canadian or Western society, and the impact of all of these factors on family structure and dynamics.

Answer 56

This, too, needs a broader context for a fuller understanding, a more global understanding, that loc- ates Canada in Western society and Western society in the international community. Hence, sociological questions about crime in general and youth crime in particular range from looking at why individuals behave as they do, by examining the family, school, or peers, to questions about crime in a global context. Questions about crime also include questions about the meaning of crime, how we talk about it and define it, how we respond to it and regulate it, and how we think about both.

Answer 57

In other words, a sociological perspective on youth crime goes beyond the question of whether crime levels are increasing or decreasing because the sociologist asks questions about why crime levels change. Hence, from a socio- logical perspective, our discussion on the history of youth crime takes us far beyond the question of interest in public forums about whether youth crime is increasing or is more violent, or whether the justice system is able to control youth crime.

Answer 58

The history of youth crime tells us that youth crime and how it is regulated, from era to era, is periodically defined as problematic and, as a result, becomes a public issue. What is important from a sociological perspective revolves around the nature and dynamics of public issues, because these serve to frame what is problematic.

Answer 59

The main questions here concern why youth crime is a public issue and how it is problematized.

Answer 60

Public issues, and in particular youth crime issues, are influenced more by structural, social, demographic, and political factors than by actual criminal beha- viour.

Answer 61

structural: Refers to how something is ordered and organized, how its parts relate and connect to each other and to the whole. demographics: The basic or vital statistics of a group, usually factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, and marital status.

Answer 62

These shifts stimulated structural changes (such as legislation restricting child labour and enforced compulsory schooling), which in turn had consequences for the social status of children and youth.

Answer 63

denied adulthood: Refers to the notion that youth, because of their legal dependency in Western society, are prevented from attaining the things that many adults take for granted, such as the right to make decisions about their own lives and the right to express their views.

Answer 64

Children and youth in the 20th century are subordinate to adult authority and are not permitted such adult rights as holding decision-making positions, working for a wage, obtaining credit, getting married, or engaging in adult pleasures. As a result, youth and children are not only dependent but also marginal to adult society, and they exist on the periphery.w

Answer 65

Their status is a marginalized one. They are the “Other,” the stranger in the midst of adult society, and the stranger is always suspect. Adults not only control youth through their dependent and marginalized status, but they also define the meaning of youth—who they are, their place, and their purpose. In this regard, for the adult, they become a “mirror of society” marginalized: A condition in which people are excluded from mainstream society. This exclusion can be economic, social, cultural, political, or all four.

Answer 66

As we have seen, the media play a crucial role in defining youth as “a dangerous class,” largely because of the pervasiveness of news media coverage in today’s society and also because people with only a little information about a particular crime are more fearful and punitive than those with more information

Answer 67

. Because youth, as the Other, are threatening to adult society and are perceived as continually “troubled” or “troubling” , sensationalistic media coverage of youth crime easily arouses public fear and moral indignation.

Answer 68

moral panic: Refers to situations where people, groups, circumstances, or events are defined and perceived to be a threat to security and public order.

Answer 69

maintains that as the Other, youth are subject to the extremism of moral panics. The media generate a panic about youth crime through continual and sensationalized crime reporting and then reinforce this panic through selective reporting of public outrage toward “out-of-control” youth—an outrage that used to usually implicate the YOA as a “cause” and now blames the YCJA.

Answer 70

In his view, it presents “hateful, stereotypical views of youth misconduct” (p. 49) and identifies the poor and marginalized as dangerous people from whom law-abiding citizens need police protection. In these media accounts, race and class become “code words for gang criminality,” and class and gender are code words for factors that “cause” youth crime—poor mothers lacking in parenting skills.

Answer 71

. As we saw in examples of headlines at the beginning of this chapter, headlines frame the discussion to follow in a “predetermined ideological context” (Schissel, 1997, p. 41)—teens are violent and out of control. The stories that follow take the form of morality plays that prey on adults’ fear of crime and an immoral world by presenting atypical, unusual youth crimes as typical and representative of youth behaviour

Answer 72

decontextualize: Remove something from its context. Crimes are always, by the limiting nature of newspapers, discussed out of the context within which they occur. Context is provided by the journalist, usually in a manner that generates a number of emotions: fear, moral outrage, despair, panic, and hatred. These emo- tions are easily displaced to the vulnerable in society, the marginalized youth, by the details provided about the crime event—such as “teen shows no remorse”

Answer 73

Stories of youth crime seldom present the views of youth advocates; rather, it is the voices of police officers and Crown prosec- utors, victims, and irate individuals that are heard. In this way, media discourse is extremely powerful in promoting the law-and-order agenda and reinforcing a sense that nothing can be done about youth crime but to implement ever more punitive and repressive measures of control

Answer 74

. At the turn of the 19th century, the public view of youth crime was of delin- quents engaged in juvenile delinquency. One hundred years later, the view was of young offenders engaged in youth crime Now, as we move further into the 21st century, the legislative terminology—beginning with its title, the Youth Criminal Justice Act—is poised to frame the public issue as one of “youth criminals” (Hogeveen & Smandych, 2001, p. 166). Certainly, as we saw from the discussion of newspaper headlines and story content, this new frame is already developing.

Answer 75

The argument presented in this chapter is that the problem of youth crime, defined as “out-of-control” youth and an ineffectual justice system, is not new and that equally important issues to address are the myths about youth crime and justice and the moral panic that surrounds both. While the history of youth crime suggests that we are not facing a “youth crime wave,” what has changed is the discourse of youth crime and how it is problematized. Now, instead of being concerned with saving the children from their corrupt and immoral environments, we are concerned about a depraved class of youth criminals preying on the good people of society.

Answer 76

a common view of youth crime, the one most often reflected in the media, is the law-and-order perspective. This view sees youth crime as out of control and far more serious than it was in the past.

Answer 77

An opposing perspective, that of youth advocates, argues that youth crime is probably no better or worse than in other periods in history. From this perspec- tive, the most important issues are youth marginalization and the social problems affecting youth, not youth crime.

Answer 78

In the colonial era from the earliest time of European settlement in North America to the early 1800s, anyone over the age of 7 who committed a crime could be treated the same as an adult. Some convicted children were imprisoned with adults, while others were executed. English common law allowed leniency for children 7 to 14, and many were indeed treated more leniently than adults. Colonial administrators worried that children and youth had too much freedom and lacked respect for authority.

Answer 79

The period from the mid-1800s to the turn of the 20th century, known as the Victorian era, witnessed increasing numbers of poor, abandoned, orphaned, and neglected children in North American cities. This period also witnessed per- ceptions of a rise in criminal activity by children and young people. Concerns were expressed about children’s well-being as well as their behaviour. Reformers wanted to “save” the childre

Answer 80

The post-Victorian, modern period, was characterized by a rise in offical criminal and delinquent behaviour by children and young people. Much of this increase can be attributed to changes in demographics, in the administration of juvenile justice, and in police practices.

Answer 81

Despite the limitations of historical records pertaining to youth crime, it appears that we have always had youth crime; that young men are responsible for most of this crime; and that most youth crime is of a petty nature, with only a small proportion involving serious violent crime. Young girls have always been sexually exploited in the prostitution trade by men, and children and youth have always stolen what they needed to ensure their material survival. Only the specifics of youth crimes and the availability of different goods to sell (e.g., crack cocaine, speed, and ecstasy) are different today.

Answer 82

publoc concerns about youth crime today are similar in many ways to those expressed in the past. People worry today as they did in the colonial era that chil- dren have no respect for authority, that they have too much freedom, and that we need more policing of youth. Similarly, in the Victorian era, as today, people worried about bad parenting and lack of appropriate guidance for youth.

Answer 83

the gradual criminalizing of youth issues. ober the past 100 years, we have gone from talking about youth as “delinquent,” to referring to them as “young offenders,” to calling them “youth criminals.”

Answer 84

The media are major and powerful playes in public discourse in such a way as to define and reproduce views of youth and youth crime in a manner that promotes hatred and fear. A result is moral panic. Some academics maintain that moral panic is a greater problem than is youth crime. Penal populism refers to political exploitation of these views in the development of criminal justice policy to gain votes.