AT-RISK CHILDREN BETTER SERVED BY SOCIAL WORKERS THAN THE COURTS

At the Canadian Bar Association's recent conference in Saint John's,
Nfld., federal Justice Minister Vic Toews identified a pressing
problem, but he proposed the wrong solution.

After delivering a speech at the conference, Toews suggested children
as young as 10 who break the law should be dealt with through the
criminal justice system.

"We need to find ways of ensuring that children are deterred from
crime," Toews said. "We need to give courts jurisdiction to intervene
in the lives of these young people."

That Toews's musings weren't well-thought out was obvious, since he
was unclear on how the system would work. The justice minister
maintained that 10- or 11-year-olds wouldn't necessarily be charged
with a criminal offence, but he offered no mechanism by which they
could then be brought to court, beyond saying "there has to be some
kind of mechanism."

Toews was also unclear as to what sanctions child offenders might
receive. He emphasized that courts should be able to offer some form
of treatment program for at-risk children, not jail time.

In effect, then, Toews was arguing that courts, rather than deciding
guilt and innocence and fashioning appropriate sentences as they
usually do, should play the role of child welfare authorities. And
this is simply not the proper role for the justice system.

In fact, Toews never provided any evidence that the justice system
would even be capable of providing the services normally supplied by
child welfare systems, nor whether the federal government would be
willing to provide the necessary funds for the justice system to do
so.

To be sure, Toews did identify what appears to be a pressing problem.
Toews suggested that child protection services aren't doing a
sufficient job of caring for at-risk children, saying, "I'm sometimes
provided with anecdotes about people coming to court by age 12 and
they've had horrendous involvement with the police and other social
agencies, but courts have been unable to intervene."

While it's unfortunate that Toews relied on anecdotes rather than on
solid statistical or scientific evidence, few people who have any
contact with the child welfare and child mental health systems will
disagree that both have been woefully underfunded across the country.

This is a serious problem, since the early identification of
behavioural and psychiatric problems is essential to prevent children
from embarking on a life of crime. The solution requires making a
commitment to ensuring that the systems are given adequate resources
to help at-risk children, rather than filling an already overburdened
court system with kids who would be better served by contact with
social workers.

It's tempting to think that the law can solve all social problems, but
in reality, law enforcement is merely an after-the-fact response to
problematic behaviour. Indeed, if the child welfare system were able
to provide all necessary treatment programs, Toews himself would have
to admit that there would be little left for the courts to do.