TAKE 10-YEAR-OLDS TO COURT: MINISTER

Canada Should Consider Jailing Children To Deter Crime, Toews Says

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

"We need to find ways of ensuring that children are deterred from
crime," Mr. 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 reject 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 12- to 17-year-olds, the same age limits as the
former young offenders act.

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 the children 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 not specific about 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 that the
authorities are not doing their jobs, she said.

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

Including 10- and 11-year-olds in young offender laws is not
mentioned in the Conservative party's election platform, which
proposes other get-tough measures, such as making it automatic for
youths charged with serious crimes to receive adult sentences, and
instructing judges to consider deterrence and denunciation when
sentencing youths convicted of crimes.

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

Some say for some children, the window of opportunity for
rehabilitation is closed by the time a child is 12, while others
counter 12 is the cutoff 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.