YOUTH CRIME CASES DOWN: STATSCAN

Change May Have More To Do With What Gets To Court

While the Harris government's concern about youth crime is growing, the
number of young people charged and convicted of almost every type of crime
is falling.

Youth courts - dealing with those between 12 and 17 years of age - heard
106,665 cases nationwide in 1998-99, down 7.4 per cent from 1992-93,
Statistics Canada said yesterday. The number of property crime cases in
that time dropped 27 per cent to 45,566.

Violent crimes made up 22 per cent of all cases in Canada's youth courts
and about half of those were for common assaults, including pushing,
slapping, punching and verbal threats.

Drug offences were almost double the total from six years earlier, but six
out of every 10 youths charged were in possession of marijuana. The overall
drug offence rate was only 19 cases for every 10,000 youths.

Young women are making up a growing proportion of the caseload, comprising
21 per cent in 1998-99, up from 18 per cent in 1992-93.

Their numbers grew for every type of crime, including violent crimes.

But that change could be a reflection of the fact many of the minor
offences boys commit are no longer going to court, said University of
Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob.

"Everybody has held for years we bring too many property crimes to court,"
he said. "If you're going to stop taking male shoplifters to court, you're
going to see this kind of shift."

The youth violent crime rates are so low that it's almost impossible to
draw conclusions about any yearly changes in the rate, he said.

"We're talking about 40 to 60 kids out of 2.5 million in the country."

Youth court statistics are more of a reflection of how adults treat kids
than of how dangerous they are, he said.

The youth crime case rate in Manitoba and Saskatchewan is double the
national rate of 435 cases per 10,000 youth. Ontario's rate of 449 is also
double the rate in Quebec, which is the lowest in the country.

Those variations are "a reflection of the behaviour of officials, not of
kids," Doob said. Many small communities "deal with kids themselves,
finding appropriate ways of holding kids accountable rather than our
bizarre way of taking them to court."

In April, the Harris government announced a series of measures to get
tougher with young people, including a law that makes parents financially
responsible for the crimes of their children up to a total of $6,000.

It also introduced a province-wide code of conduct for students that will
uniformly impose punishments, including rules that would expel any student
who brings a weapon to school or who supplies others with drugs or alcohol.