DON'T MAKE CRIMINALS OF CHILDREN UNDER 12

Federal Justice Minister Vic Toews never met a hot button he could
resist pushing. Last month he mused about denying serial killer
Clifford Olson the automatic right to parole hearings after 25 years.
Now he is offering Canadians his thoughts on lowering the age of
criminal responsibility to 10 from the current standard of 12.

That is an old Reform Party dream. But Reform's kinder, gentler
offspring, the Conservative Party, would lower the age not to punish
children but to help them obtain treatment, Mr. Toews told a Canadian
Bar Association conference in St. John's. The children would not
necessarily even have to be charged criminally; a court could order
them into treatment nonetheless.

Mechanisms to bring support to children and their families (in some
cases separating children from their families, with court approval)
already exist in provincial child-protection laws. To what extent
such laws are invoked when troubled children commit serious property
crimes such as arson, or violent crimes such as sexual assault and
knife assaults, Mr. Toews didn't say. A federal Justice Department
spokesman didn't know the answer either. Nor did Mr. Toews have any
statistics to offer on the extent of the crime problem among children
in Grades 4 and 5, though he did say he has heard anecdotes. His
concern is children "who may be under the influence of criminal
elements." Perhaps, he said, the courts should be able to move in
without a black-and-white rule.

"Wouldn't the police have to charge them first?" a reporter asked.

"With what?" Mr. Toews responded.

"I don't know, how would they get to court?"

"[T]here has to be some kind of a mechanism . . ." Mr. Toews replied,
according to a transcript provided by his office. (In the official
text of his speech to the conference, he made no reference to this
issue.) He was merely thinking out loud.

A few observations: Children who stab, burn or try to commit serious
sexual assaults at 10 should be brought to the authorities'
attention. Child-welfare agencies are better placed than the police
to do the job in the children's interest. If they aren't doing it,
and if communities are left unprotected as a result, it would be
helpful if Mr. Toews assembled some information to identify the
shortcomings and to explain how they might be fixed.

It is also clear that Canada is painfully short of mental-health
treatment for children. Senator Michael Kirby (see below) has called
mental-health services in general the orphan of the health system,
and children's mental health "the orphan of the orphan." A
time-consuming legalistic approach with lawyers and judges leading to
court-ordered referrals to waiting lists does not seem terribly helpful.

If Mr. Toews's point is that deviant children need help, he's right.
But 10 is too early an age to engage the criminal process. It's a
basic Canadian value that errant young children deserve
non-judgmental community support.