SHOULD 10-YEAR-OLDS FACE JAIL?

Minister Floats Lowering Age Of Legal Responsibility

ST. JOHN'S - Children aged 10 and 11 who run afoul of the law should
be brought before the courts, Canada's Justice Minister said
yesterday in a controversial and surprise proposal to expand the age
of criminal responsibility, which is currently 12.

"We need to find ways of ensuring that children are deterred from
crime," Vic Toews told the annual gathering of the Canadian Bar Association.

"We need to give courts jurisdiction to intervene in the lives of
these young people."

Speaking to reporters later, he did not rule out incarceration of
children under 12, but he said the courts' primary focus should be
treatment programs outside the jail system.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act, which replaced the Young Offenders
Act three years ago, purposely excluded children under 12 because the
Liberal government of the day said 12 is considered to be the age at
which a young person can understand their actions and consequences.

The law applies to youths aged 12 to 17, the same age limits as the
Young Offenders Act had.

Several provinces, along with the former Reform party, lobbied hard
to include 10- and 11-year-olds in the criminal justice system during
heated debates in the late 1990s, arguing they are old enough to be
held accountable for their crimes.

Mr. Toews said yesterday it's often too late to rehabilitate troubled
children who cannot be charged until age 12.

"The theory is that the child welfare system will take care of those
children, but that is not the case in most provinces," he said.

"In most provinces, in fact, the child welfare system is allowing
criminal conduct to continue among those types of children. They're
being used by gangs and drug couriers to do break-and-enters, there
are other kinds of very serious crimes, so by the time they're 12,
they're already criminals."

Mr. Toews was unclear on the kinds of sanctions the courts should
have the power to impose.

"We need to have a special way for the courts to intervene in a
positive fashion in the lives of these children in some type of
treatment program, and I think that needs to be discussed," he said.

The prospect of including 10- and 11-year-olds in the criminal
justice system sparked an angry response from Heather Perkins-McVey,
a lawyer for the bar association. "Does he want the death penalty for
them, too?" she asked. "This concerns me that we're going back to the
Dark Ages. Maybe we should have workhouses, too."

Ms. Perkins-McVey said the criminal justice system is not the proper
place for handling wayward children, who are currently apprehended by
child welfare authorities and offered treatment in group homes.
Rather than bringing these children before the courts, the federal
government should increase funding to the provinces for improved
child welfare services if the Justice Minister is worried the
authorities are not doing their jobs, Ms. Perkins-McVey said.

"The criminal justice system is not a place to obtain treatment for
anyone," she said.

The Conservative party's election platform included several criminal
justice measures, such as making it automatic for youths charged with
serious crimes to receive adult sentences and instructing judges to
consider deterrence when sentencing youths. It did not include
lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10.

Criminologists and sociologists have had varying opinions on the
wisdom of making children under 12 legally responsible for their actions.

Some say the window of opportunity for rehabilitation is closed by
age 12 for some children. Others counter 12 is the cut-off age for
being able to understand criminal behaviour and consequences.

Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, young people convicted of
crimes do not carry criminal records into adulthood.

Mr. Toews did not say whether he plans legislation any time soon.