COURTS WILL NOT SOLVE CHILDHOOD DELINQUENCY

The federal justice minister wants to put 10-year-old kids in jail?

Vic Toews said no such thing. But that was the sensational spin some
people were quick to put on comments by the Conservative minister on
how to deal with children under 12 who commit crimes.

What Toews did say is that we need a more satisfactory way to deal
with serious delinquency by 10- and 11-year-olds, and that reducing
the age of criminal responsibility from the current 12 is the way to do it.

If there is indeed a problem with rising rates of delinquency among
10- and 11-year-olds, we can't agree that bringing young children
before the courts and branding them as criminals would be the answer.

Among our objections to the idea is this most basic of questions:
Exactly how would such a measure possibly improve the situation?

Toews specifically alleged that youngsters who are beyond the arm of
the law are being used by "gangs and drug couriers" to commit
burglaries and other serious crimes. "By the time they're 12, they're
already criminals." That sounds scary, but how big a problem are we
talking about here? Is it growing?

Surely, we shouldn't be making justice policy on the basis of
headlines about the latest heinous crime by a pre-teen hoodlum.

Statistics Canada doesn't have numbers on crime committed by children
under 12, because such people currently cannot be charged.

But a leading expert in the field told The Gazette yesterday: "I know
of no evidence that would suggest that there is an increase, alarming
or otherwise, in crime (serious or otherwise) by 10- and 11-year olds."

Anthony Doob, a University of Toronto criminologist, added, "When I
have looked systematically at the data, what I have found is that
there are, very occasionally, serious violent crimes committed by
those under 12. But the numbers are exceedingly small, especially in
comparison to those in their mid-teens."

For those young kids who do persist in committing serious crimes,
Toews maintains, "we need a special way for the courts to intervene
in a positive fashion in the lives of these children in some type of
treatment program."

We heartily agree with that sentiment once the words "for the courts"
are excised from Toews's sentence. A stern lecture from a judge and
an order to remand a child to a treatment program will not magically
create more or better resources to help these kids.

Instead, it's the provinces that need to act to direct more money to
youth protection agencies, mental-health services and schools to
respond to these children. We know, for example, there's a crying
need for better resources at Quebec's Direction de la protection de
la jeunesse.

Improving the behaviour of troubled kids depends on better social
services and especially on better treatment, not on the courts.