JAILING KIDS BRINGS A CRIME EXPLOSION

For a man who is described as very smart, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper is oddly impervious to facts. Evidence can be stacked
sky-high, yet his government dismisses as unfounded or wrong things
that conflict with its ideology or political purposes.

If there is an election next year -- a possibility-- the
Conservatives will bring out their law-and-order platform once again.
The gun registry is already on its way out.

The next step is to throw into jail children unlucky enough to be
charged with crimes.

During the 2008 election campaign, the Harper government called the
current Youth Criminal Justice Act "an unmitigated failure" and swore
to make young offenders "accountable to their victims and society."

It was a heartless piece of grandstanding against some of the
country's most defenceless inhabitants, but one that will doubtless
be resurrected. It shouldn't be.

Research published this year shows that jailing young people
backfires badly. The tough law-and-order approach does the exact
opposite of what the Conservatives claim it will.

A study by the Universite de Montreal's Richard Tremblay and Uberto
Gatti of the University of Genoa found that putting young delinquents
into detention with other troubled youngsters leads to increased criminality.

Youngsters who entered the juvenile justice system -- even briefly --
were nearly seven times more likely to be arrested for crimes in
adulthood than similarly badly behaved youngsters who were kept out
of the system. (The study, published in the Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry, followed 779 low-income youth in Montreal
for 20 years.)

Jailing these youngsters meant they were 37 times more likely to be
arrested again as adults. Even youngsters put on probation -- during
which they could be exposed to other delinquent youngsters in
counselling groups, for example -- were 14 times more likely to be
arrested for a crime in adulthood.

"The problem is," Tremblay said in a statement accompanying the
study, "that delinquent behaviour is contagious, especially among adolescents.

"Putting deviant adolescents together creates a culture of deviance,
which increases the likelihood of continued criminal behaviour."

Tremblay said there are two solutions to the problem of peer
contagion: Prevention programs that start before adolescence when
children are more responsive to help; and avoiding or at least
minimizing the concentration of delinquent youngsters in youth
justice programs.

The Conservative "solution," on the other hand, is to start
sentencing 14-year-olds to adult prison. If juvenile detention makes
things worse, imprisoning young people with adult criminals virtually
guarantees us a new crop of career criminals.

The cause of child delinquency is complex, according to the
Tremblay-Gatti study, varying from child to child. There are no easy
solutions. Effective intervention has to take into account the risk
factors present in a child's family, friends, school and community.
Growing up in an unstable family with a criminal background in a poor
neighbourhood are risk factors for any child.

A second, much-publicized study this year found that Canada's 2003
Youth Criminal Justice Act is viewed internationally as a model to
follow. A principal aim of the law, enacted by the Liberal
government, is to rehabilitate young people, reserving incarceration
for serious, violent crime.

Since 2003, Canada's youth incarceration rate, once one of the
world's highest, has dropped 36 per cent. Under the law, the justice
system must try to find alternatives to jail such as community
service or counselling. (There were 991 youths serving sentences in 2007-08.)

The Harper government argues that statistics show the 2003 law has
not had the positive effect its fans claim it has.

In Canada between 1997 and 2006, the rate of violent crime climbed 12
per cent among 12- to 17-year-olds. The homicide rate among
youngsters during the same years rose 41 per cent.

What the government leaves out of these seemingly scary statistics is
the following: 80 per cent of violent crime committed by youngsters
is in the form of a simple assault, the least serious form of the
offence. Homicide constitutes 0.05 per cent of youth crime. A murder
committed by a youngster is rare. Variations are huge from year to year.

But the government is right about one thing: We should pay more
attention to young delinquents. That means more money for research,
for individual counselling, and to help schools deal with aggressive
children. It does not mean jail.