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EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, November 22, 1995

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[English]

The Chairman: We'll start the meeting that was set for 3:30 p.m.

Before we start with the guests we have before us, we have to deal with the matter of the meetings we had scheduled for next week in the maritimes.

As I've indicated to the members from the Bloc and from the Reform Party, our whip requires attendance here in Ottawa. There are so many matters to be dealt with, I believe with their concurrence the matters set for next week can be set over to another date to be set by the committee. Since the committee has set the dates for next week, I would require a motion.

Mr. Regan (Halifax West): So moved, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: So you'll move that the meetings set for next week be adjourned to a subsequent date to be set by the committee.

Mr. Regan: My words exactly, Mr. Chairman.

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: Before us on the committee today, dealing with the Young Offenders Act and the phase II review, we have from the John Howard Society: Susan Reid-MacNevin, vice-president of issues, John Howard Society of Canada; Jim McLatchie, executive director, John Howard Society of Canada; Graham Stewart, executive director, John Howard Society of Ontario; and Christine Leonard, executive director, John Howard Society of Alberta.

You'll have an opportunity to make a presentation to the committee and after that there'll be a period of questions and answers. Please proceed.

Mr. Jim McLatchie (Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada): On behalf of the board of directors of the John Howard Society of Canada, I'd like to express our appreciation for the opportunity to talk to the committee again on this most important subject. I'd like to introduce the people who are going to make particular comments to our brief.

Dr. Susan Reid-MacNevin is a professor of criminology at the University of Guelph. She will be speaking first. She is also the vice-president of issues of the John Howard Society of Canada.

Following her will be Mr. Graham Stewart, the executive director of the John Howard Society of Ontario and well known, I suspect, to a good number of the committee.

Speaking third will be Ms Christine Leonard, the executive director of the John Howard Society of Alberta.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll ask Dr. Reid-MacNevin to begin.

Ms Susan Reid-MacNevin (Vice-President, Issues, John Howard Society of Canada): As Jim was saying, we really welcome the opportunity to participate in this broad, in-depth review of the young offender legislation.

We've been concerned about the kinds of things that have been happening with the Young Offenders Act since before it was passed in 1984. We feel that a lot of the changes that have been made to the Young Offenders Act have been done in somewhat of a piecemeal fashion, primarily in response to the public's demand for a quick-fix solution in the form of a get-tough law, or a law-and-order response to the perceived problems of youth crime.

The phase II review gives us an opportunity to think about the purposes of our juvenile justice system, to have a broad consultation with respect to what it is we believe in, in terms of our principles of justice, and in particular youth justice, and to start to think about what the empirical research tells us about what works with young people in terms of effective rehabilitation.

We would like to discuss with you today what we feel is the most important issue in youth justice today: for the most part, the tendency of legislation and legislators to misinterpret public attitudes, and the belief that punitive legislation will satisfy those who promote deterrence as a cornerstone of youth corrections.

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We've reviewed many of the issues relating to the Young Offenders Act over the last number of years from the time - perhaps you recall the Department of Justice report in 1965 - we were talking about changing the way we did business with young people.

We want to support strongly the guiding principle within the Young Offenders Act legislation, particularly the amendment with Bill C-37 that gives particular structure to the notion that the long-term protection of society is best achieved through the rehabilitation of young people. We want to support that notion strongly.

However, we would like to share some information we have about the public's misconception about what's going on with youth crime in Canada, for we believe if the public were informed about the reality regarding youth crime, it would be more likely to support a rehabilitative ideal.

It may be true that the public overwhelmingly believes youth courts are too lenient with young offenders. However, research I'm working on presently also shows us that the public is also not very familiar with the Young Offenders Act, or in fact with any youth custody facilities.

One of the questions we posed to respondents was whether they had ever seen a documentary on what a secure custody facility would be like. Sixty-two per cent of the sample said, no, they weren't really very familiar with anything that had anything to do with youth custody. Sixty per cent of my sample also said that most of their information about young offenders came from the media, primarily news programs or the newspaper.

We also know that the public is misinformed about the percentage of youth that are committing offences and, more specifically, the number of violent crimes committed by youth. In my study, 65% of the respondents overestimated the number of crimes that were committed by young people, and 70% overestimated the amount of violent crime.

The public also underestimates the cost of what it takes to supervise a young offender. Seventy-seven per cent of the sample underestimated the cost of housing a young person in a secure custody facility for one year; 66% overestimated how much it would cost to keep a young offender in the community; and 55% felt it costs more to house an adult offender than it does a young offender. We know, in fact, it's the other way around.

The public believes conditions in young offender facilities are too liberal. But when we asked them whether or not young persons who were transferred to adult court should serve their sentences in adult institutions, overwhelmingly 87% said no, primarily because those kinds of institutions were too harsh and negative in terms of trying to rehabilitate a young person.

The public values the importance of rehabilitation for young people and believes, mistakenly, that youth in custody have had a steady dose of counselling and treatment. Almost 90% of the sample I studied said that the young people in custody were receiving treatment.

The public still promotes the value and sees a difference between the adult and youth justice systems. The public believes serious young offenders should be transferred to adult courts, but they're split as to whether this should happen before or after a finding of guilt.

The public is also able to clearly articulate the problems that youth face today, which we know are significant in terms of what the empirical research tells us about root causes of crime, such as poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and dysfunctional families.

Finally, the public believes the community has a responsibility for the prevention of youth crime and that the best strategy for preventing youth crime lies in the education system - in terms of school, public education - and the involvement of the community. Less than 5% of the people I interviewed said that there was nothing we could do to prevent crime, which I find is quite encouraging.

Why has there been such an effective response in terms of fear and terror and panic? I would argue that primarily it's a result of the negative influences that have been promoted in the media, as well as what all Canadians are feeling in terms of economic instability and an overall social instability within our country.

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It takes more than a perceived increase in the incidence of crime to create a moral panic, but the fact that people have a felt crisis, the notion of general panic among people is real and it's tied into an effective response.

We've come to believe that young people are violent, troublesome, and troubling, and we try to respond in a protective stance by teaching them lessons.

One of the problems we face in trying to solve a youth crime problem by suggesting that there isn't a youth crime crisis, which in fact there is in terms of statistics and empirical data today, is that we've created a spectacle out of youth by drawing attention to the minority of cases of serious violent offences that we read about in the newspaper.

We've created a fearful response in terms of what the public feels about youth.

Popular culture has created almost a common-sense experience of crisis. What we need to be doing, rather than just saying that there isn't a youth crime crisis, is looking very clearly at why this powerful message continues and try to determine the most suitable means of debunking the current felt crisis related to youth crime.

We believe that non-governmental organizations, such as the John Howard Society, are obvious allies of the government in terms of forming partnerships and trying to spread more informed information to the community, because we work with thousands of volunteers at the community level.

We believe very strongly that if the public were given information in the form of a large-scale campaign, they would agree that in order to ensure the long-term protection of society we must work together in a partnership to try to do something at the community level to ensure we look after our own members.

We also feel that it's important that we look to solutions that have been shown through empirical research to be effective. To date there's been no research that points to the effectiveness of deterrence-based, punitive programs. Programs such as boot camps, as we call them in Ontario, strict discipline programs, have resulted in recidivism rates that are the same as or higher than more traditionally based custody facilities' rates.

Conversely, in the United States, there is a piece of research that is showing significant gains by using what's called a multi-systematic therapy approach, which keeps young people in the family and does out-placement by professionals from community agencies. The most recent piece of follow-up to this approach was done with very serious delinquency in the United States, where they looked at kids who had quite serious records, 3.5 previous arrests and at least 9.5 weeks prior incarcerations, with at least one arrest for a violent crime such as manslaughter, assault with intent to kill, and aggravated assault. Those they've tried this program with weren't minor offenders. Seventy-one per cent of the sample they looked at in the United States had previously been in custody for at least three weeks. The youth in this program, who had intensive therapy in their home placements, were found to not re-offend. In fact, the recidivism rate was at least 20% lower than that of those youth who were matched and received probation and/or incarceration.

Further, a follow-up study of 68% of the youth involved, given after 59 weeks, indicated - in contrast to those in the regular experience - that only 20% of the youth who had been in the community-based treatment program had experienced incarceration.

It's also more cost-effective and of course we're talking about U.S. dollars. The cost of keeping a kid in a community facility such the MST program in the United States was about $2,800 versus $17,000 for the same period of time in a locked facility. When you start adding the cost of recidivism, then it's not only that it's cost-effective, but it's also effective because it does some good for the young person.

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In terms of the notion that we want to move beyond a common-sense notion of fear, it's this spirit of partnership we would like to bring in, in terms of our understanding and our long history of working with people in the community. One of the things that came about last year was our leadership role in developing a youth justice coalition where we brought together over 40 organizations and individuals who believed that it was important to make the statement that putting kids in jail was not necessarily the best way to deal with young people who come into conflict with the law. It's with that spirit of leadership and cooperation that we would like to work with the government and propose that we get involved in a long-term public education campaign on the reality versus the gaps and misinformation in terms of the public.

With that I'll turn to Graham in terms of some of the specific recommendations we have related to our overall recommendations.

Mr. Graham Stewart (Executive Director, John Howard Society of Ontario): Thank you.

I'd like to begin by thanking members of the committee for having us here today and giving us an opportunity to speak about our concerns.

In preparation for this committee we were obviously facing a very broad area, a very complex area. The terms of reference for the committee with respect to juvenile justice, as you well know, is a tremendous area and there's a huge volume of material. So we've prepared our submission in two parts. The part that we presented to you in writing and are talking about today is what we've distilled as being for us the most important aspects of the current environment and principles relating to youth justice in Canada. We've also submitted today, although you'll be getting it later, a much more detailed discussion of specific areas that you're concerned with. But it's important to us in a short time to focus on what we thought was most important.

I'm going to speak very briefly about a number of principles that we think are important principles in looking at a justice system, and particularly the youth justice system. They are principles that we've adopted as a society against which we measure any of our recommendations to proposals relating to criminal justice reform.

First, community-based methods of encouraging acceptable behaviour should take precedence over the use of the criminal justice system whenever possible. We feel much conflict that takes place in this society can and should be dealt with in the community, rather than in the criminal justice system because of its expense, its general lack of efficiency, and the fact that it should be seen as the last alternative.

We believe the least onerous punishment should be that which can be justified by circumstances. We realize that punishment is a response society needs in order to feel that the values we have in society are ones that are shared and respected. At the same time, because punishment is essentially the inflicting of pain, something should be done only to the degree that it's absolutely necessary.

Further, we think we need to define what we mean by punishment. In our view, punishment involves the loss of choices and freedoms. If it's a fine, it's the loss of the choice of how to spend your money. If it's community service, it's the lack of choice of how you spend your free time. Ultimately, if it's incarceration, it's the loss of freedom to come and go. But it's not civil death. It's not the loss of other kinds of rights that imply dignity and respect for human beings. And that should be a measure that's understood and is the basis on which we think of what the punishment is.

Because those are the limits, there are many unintended consequences that can come from punishment, particularly the use of incarceration, that are destructive to the individual. It is our view, therefore, that corrections officials have an obligation to make available to those in its care those programs and services that our society feels obliged to offer its members generally. We provide free education in the community. We provide medical care. We provide all sorts of social services in our communities, because we all know collectively that these are things that we need to grow and develop in our society. It's essential in our mind not to deprive those who are in a correctional facility from those instruments of social development that we've all depended on and know are critical to our personal development.

We provide those services in the community, not on the basis of deserving but on the basis of need. We think that same principle must be understood within corrections when we provide education, counselling, employment services, and so on. It's not because an offender deserves these kinds of programs, it's because they need these kinds of programs. And because they need these programs and services it's in our mutual interest to make sure that they're provided.

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We also believe coercive measures taken by correctional officials should be no more than are needed to ensure that the sentence of the court is carried out. This leads to the notion of gradual release. The degree to which an offender is prepared to cooperate in the administration of the criminal justice system is the degree to which we should be giving opportunities to people to do so.

The notion of using community release mechanisms, gradual release, probation, or other kinds of community programs is quite consistent with that notion. It is an important principle that should be worked into legislation without artificial barriers being put in the way of community and reduced levels of supervision.

Correctional authorities in particular have a responsibility to ensure the safety of those in their custody. We must make sure that correctional facilities and programs do not in fact victimize and brutalize people. As you know from previous testimony we've given, that's been part of our traditional concern about transfers to adult court and to adult institutions in particular. Whatever the environment, in our minds that's the critical general principle if we're to have a correctional system that doesn't make people coming out worse than they were when they went in.

Finally, notions of fundamental justice must characterize the administration of correctional programs. We feel that correctional facilities reflect the values that are important in the community to offenders and to prisoners in particular.

If institutions are not seen to be very principled or if they're not respectful of people's fundamental rights and of justice, that paints the picture for offenders. They see the society as hypocritical. In our experience that tends to generate a destructive sense of animosity and hostility towards the world around us.

Dr. MacNevin's comments reflected what we think is the substantial divergence between the public mind and the reality with respect to the operations of the criminal justice system. There seems to be a considerable body of evidence to suggest that people see the criminal justice system for young offenders in particular as a much more lenient and soft system than the evidence suggests.

We also see a divergence between the public's fear of crime and the public's likelihood or risk of victimization. Fear is going up while victimization is stable and declining. Our concern is that in this type of environment it's very difficult to prepare justice legislation.

If one addresses the public fear, one is likely to introduce measures that will be both costly and ineffective and will probably be destructive. If one simply promotes programs that are likely to be effective and cost-effective, they may not achieve public acceptance. The public will think its fear is not being addressed.

With that in mind, our sense is that the primary task of any initiative at this point must be to address that divergence. The primary focus must be to try to create an environment in which public understanding of the operation of the criminal justice system and of crime is closer to a balance with what's actually taking place.

Therefore, we encourage this committee to consider that at this time, particularly since there have been a number of rounds of amendments to the young offenders legislation over the last few years with very little evidence that those changes have particularly addressed public confidence. Nor have they been in place long enough to be evaluated.

Our primary recommendation is that the committee concern itself with a major public education strategy designed to address the reality of youth crime and corrections. Continue to do research, and do more in-depth research into what public attitudes truly are. Dr. MacNevin speaks to the fact that the sample surveys seem to generate indications of a very hard line in the public. More sophisticated surveys suggest that the public mind is much more complex than we think.

We think the goals of these particular strategies should make sure that public attitudes are based on facts and that legislators are not in a position to misjudge public attitudes.

We have taken other positions and recommendations in the submission. I'll defer those for questions and pass it over to Christine.

Ms Christine Leonard (Executive Director, John Howard Society of Alberta): Good afternoon. I'm here to talk with you about some of our John Howard Society programs we're operating for young offenders in the province of Alberta.

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I would like to start with our open custody group homes. We have two; one is in Edmonton and one is in Red Deer.

Our house in Edmonton is called Howard House; it's a 12-bed, open custody facility for male young offenders. It's located in a residential neighbourhood, and that to date has been very successful. The house operates with a neighbourhood committee that at the beginning met every two months to deal with the issues of having this facility in their neighbourhood. They've since gotten along quite successfully and they've reduced the number of meetings to twice a year. I think that's a good indicator of its relationship with its neighbours.

The kids do a lot for the community. They run the skating rink - they flood the rink and they shovel it when it snows. They shovel all the walks in the area and they cut lawns for seniors' facilities and their very close neighbours, and that helps develop a good relationship between the group home and the neighbourhood.

One of the more innovative things about Howard House and our Red Deer facility is that they both offer an in-house, full-year school program that offers everything from grade 1 to grade 12, depending on need. They both have a full-time teacher and a full-time teacher's aide, and they offer credit high school programs if need be, and work experience programs. These schools that are operated in-house have proven to be very successful in a number of areas.

It was always very difficult for us to place our custody youth in community schools, because the community schools don't want to have to deal with these kind of youth, and if we got them into a school, they tended to be suspended or kicked out before the end of October. So this program has been very good in keeping these kids in school and committed to their education.

When they arrive at the houses, they're tested and placed at their own academic level, and that's where they work one-to-one with these teachers and teachers' aides.

During the first year of the Edmonton school's operation, unlawfully-at-large charges were reduced by more than half. So these kids, because they're not out in the community, are much more successful in not receiving new charges on that basis.

The program also offers a work experience, where there's a teacher that comes from the community and brings the kids, gets them job interviews, and brings them back and forth to their placements, which can lead to part-time employment in some cases.

Since we started the schools in the two houses, our reintegration rate is more successful. They're being accepted into schools, they haven't lapsed in their education, and in some cases, if need be, if the youth are released from our facility but are struggling in their community school, they can come back and do their education for a short time at our house to assist in their reintegration and make it more gradual. That's also a very successful feature of our work with these kids.

Both of our houses offer recreation programs several nights a week, and the programs are both educational and physical - gym activities, movies, hiking, museums. They try to schedule some special events in these kids' lives that they may not have had in their home life around holidays - Christmas, Easter, and Hallowe'en. The goal is for them to learn positive options for the use of their free time, and they're very successful in that. In both houses, it's a very structured environment and the only free time these kids have is Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening.

Both also offer a living skills program, which is a very structured night of learning social skills and having outside speakers such as public health nurses come in and talk about sexually transmitted diseases, for example.

They also have one evening of major chores, where they learn to accept responsibility for their living accommodations in cleaning and upkeep, and they also learn cooking. Each one has a week in which they have to work with a volunteer cook and prepare the meals for the house.

The years of cutbacks in Alberta have had an impact on both of these young offender open custody facilities. We used to have a cook on staff; we've now had to find volunteers to do the cooking for us, because the staff-youth ratio isn't high enough for the staff to cook three meals a day. Fortunately we've been successful in finding a full-time volunteer to assist with that.

It used to be that both of our houses only took kids 14 to 17, which meant that the programs could be geared to that particular age. Now we are taking kids that are younger, 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds in the house along with the 17-year-olds, and that's a mix that's hard to cope with.

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We're finding that our houses are being pressured to release these kids earlier than they may be ready for. We may not have time to find them an appropriate community placement if they're not welcome back with their family, or we may not have time to find them a school placement that will accept them.

These are some of the pressures we're facing because of the cutbacks in the administration of youth justice in Alberta.

Both of our young offender facilities are very community oriented. The Red Deer facility runs a campground in the summertime. They do all the upkeep, all the garbage disposal. This is volunteer time they put in.

Since January of this year, in the Red Deer group home, where they have ten beds, they have put in over 3,000 community hours. These aren't hours that are mandated community service order hours. These are hours the house has agreed to do for the community to make the community's life have some more quality.

I'd like to take a couple more minutes to talk about our victim-offender reconciliation program in Calgary. This is funded by the United Way. It takes referrals. There are no limits on the types of offences that can come to this mediation program. It can be any offence, from the very minor - shoplifting - to the more serious - assault. They take cases that are diversions from the system, so the police can refer them without charging. The victim can decide they want to have some resolution with the offender and ask to participate in this program. It can be pre-sentence, where a probation officer or a crown might decide the youth might want to participate in this with the victim, or it can be a part of a sentence imposed by a judge.

It's been a very successful program. Some 91% of the mediations that occur result in an agreement between the victim and offender for some kind of settlement. That can include financial compensation, personal service to the victim, community service work, apologies, or any other innovative idea the victim and the offender can come to an agreement on. Ninety-one per cent of the mediations had agreements and 99% of the agreements were successfully completed to the satisfaction of the victim. So we believe it's a very successful program.

We, the John Howard Society, also offer a similar program in Red Deer.

I'd be very happy to talk about some of the other programs we offer within the John Howard Society. These are not necessarily programs for young offenders who have been convicted but for the community and for youth in the community as a whole. We offer some very innovative, exciting programs.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

We'll start the first round of questions. Mr. Langlois, ten minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): Your speech was so interesting that I forgot to take notes. I will try to find my way through my own brand of shorthand.

Ms. Reid-MacNevin, during your presentation, you said the role of your organization was to fill the gaps in the system and to lay myths to rest. How are these gaps identified?

[English]

Ms Reid-MacNevin: Do you think you could say that one more time; what you said about the notion that society's responsible for the flaws and misconceptions and how you go about changing that? Is that what you're asking about?

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: I thought I understood that your organization sees its main responsibility as filling the gaps in the juvenile justice system and lying to rest certain myths. I would like you to elaborate on these concepts and I would like you to point out some of those gaps and some of those myths.

I might take this opportunity to raise a question that you broached in your presentation. You said that your public opinion polls and surveys demonstrated that many people felt responsibility should lie with the school and saw schools as the best place to shape the behaviour of youngsters. One of the factors that seems to be missing, and perhaps you could discuss this in your answer, is the role of the family: the family as the basic societal unit, especially the family in 1995 which is in many cases broken, has but a single parent, is blended, etc.

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Is there a cause and effect relationship between the behaviour of young people nowadays and the shattering of the traditional family as we knew it, like the one I knew when I was growing up? We always refer to the times when we grew up as the good old days, but when I was 10 or 12 years old, when I displayed some sort of unacceptable behaviour, the first tribunal I had to face was my father and my mother.

Of course, there have been changes since then. Today, very often, the parents or the parent, who have many activities, are not the first tribunal, but rather the first people to reinforce the young person's deviant behaviour by helping him defend his rights before the courts and by invoking the Charter at the first opportunity. I think that some education should be done at the parental level. I wonder if that's possible. Can you tell me your views on this?

[English]

Ms Reid-MacNevin: With respect to the issue around the myth, part of the reason I was quite interested in doing this research was that there hadn't been very much public opinion research done on youth crime. People were talking about the notion of being fearful of youth and the idea behind it. But when we start looking at what people are actually saying about youth crime, the myths continue to persist, like the ideas that violent crime is on the increase among youth and kids who are in secure custody facilities are receiving treatment.

The way you go about dispelling some of these myths - and in Ontario we've been quite active in doing this - is by preparing fact sheets on the reality versus the gap in perception, and distributing them widely. You also meet with people in community meetings and share the information through newsletters and so. If you can share even one fact or one story it's helpful, and it seems to spread to other people at the community level. The strength we have in our organization is that we work with volunteers at the community level who can do that.

With respect to your second question about the family, there's one thing I didn't mention when I was talking about this research that has come out of the United States. The reason this research or this community-based, multi-systematic therapy works is that it targets those areas that we know are predictors of delinquent behaviour. One of them, of course, is the family. The second is the school and peer involvement.

They work on ways of helping families preserve or strengthen their cohesiveness. They look at parental discipline and try to teach families how to work more effectively together to resolve conflicts through modelling and various and sundry other forms of working to preserve the family unit. They try to do this as opposed to out-of-home placement in an institution, where there may not be any family contact for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it's very expensive to travel to these facilities to visit with a young person.

So there is a very important component of family involvement. When we start looking at solutions that we know work, one of the ways of ensuring that we continue to see the family as important is to stop putting so many non-violent offenders in institutions away from their families and instead work at strengthening the family unit.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: Does Ms. Leonard have anything to add?

[English]

Ms Leonard: The John Howard Society in Alberta offers education programs in all six areas of the province in which we're located. We go into all the schools in our areas and talk about the Young Offenders Act. We talk about responsibility and the justice system. We start as early as grade 3 doing these public education programs for youth about the system, especially at the age when they're coming into the ages covered by the Young Offenders Act. That's where we tend to focus.

We're also very active across the country in attending and speaking at these public forums and responding through the media to initiatives that we feel violate the principles of fundamental justice. We have a vital role to play in this as the John Howard Society, as a community organization, through our volunteers. In most of our areas of the country we're very active in that, particularly in schools.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: Ms. Reid-MacNevin, in the statistics that you have at your disposal, do you see any direct cause and effect relationship between the socio-economic environment and the crime rate?

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For example, is the crime rate higher among children living in lower income or welfare-dependent families than among children in high income families? Similarly, are children from better educated families less at risk?

[English]

Ms Reid-MacNevin: In terms of the companion document that you'll be able to have a look at, we've outlined some of these factors in terms of risks, or the possibility of delinquent behaviour. What we found in terms of the kinds of things that are predictors of people being involved in the criminal justice system - this is from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics - the socio-demographic characteristics that correlate most strongly with all offences under study is the male unemployment rate.

Municipalities with a relatively high proportion of families living in poverty in rented dwellings or supported by lone parents tend to have the highest rate of serious assault, robbery, break and enter, theft, and the most serious drug offences.

Municipalities with relatively high proportions of males between the ages of 20 and 34 tend to have the highest rates of robbery, break and enter, theft and the most serious drug offences relative to other areas.

The percentage of the population aged 15 and over without a high school diploma is the population characteristic most highly correlated with rates of assault and sexual assault.

Ms Leonard: I would also like to comment on that. The John Howard Society of Alberta just completed a two-year research project on the socio-economic factors linked to crime. What's very clear is that there isn't a cause-and-effect relationship. It's not that simple. It's very complex.

Some people who live with all the risk factors related to crime come through as successful, responsible adults and don't get involved in the justice system. They have some kind of resiliency factors in their lives that get them through. Some people who have all of the benefits society can offer them still get involved in crime. It's not as simple as a cause-and-effect relationship.

Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I would like to thank our panel for being here today to try to help us in the job we have ahead in reviewing the Young Offenders Act.

There are lots of things to talk about and we only have a short time to talk to you. I'm interested in following up on what was just said. There seems to be a resilience factor in some. What do you attribute that to?

Just for the record I'll just describe that again. I understood you to say there are some children who come out of that milieu, which is conducive to crime, without ever coming into contact with crime. Would you explain what you think makes up that factor?

Ms Leonard: Unfortunately we didn't have the funds or time to go into the specific resiliency factors in our research. I'm aware that the Crime Prevention Council is looking at that right now.

In our experience in working with people in the system, sometimes a key person in your life who is stable can make a difference. It could be a teacher, your neighbour, or your grandmother. In spite of all these other factors, if you can form a bond with that person it can get you through some very difficult life problems. But beyond that, our research was not able to go into that.

Mr. Ramsay: Would that be a solution or formula for the majority? In other words, for those who do come in contact with the justice system, is that aspect of some individual who provides a degree of stability or whatever in the life of the child missing?

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Ms Leonard: I think it's critical to have a person you can bond with and who is a stable factor in your life.

However, one thing we believe about the resiliency research is that we don't want to give these kids the worst possible socio-economic life to live and hope that one person can get them through. The point of social development is to get rid of the risk factors. It wasn't acceptable to us to say well, you can live in poverty and have a poor education and have family violence and substance abuse in your life as long as you have a really good grandmother. No, the point is that we need to take away all these social and economic factors that are causing them this problem to begin with.

Resiliency is one thing, but it's not the answer.

Mr. Stewart: If I might address that too, some of the long-term British research on this has found that if you look at any of these social factors - poverty, unemployment and so on - it's very difficult to draw any kind of relationship. But the more of these factors present in any given situation, the greater and more dramatic increases there are in the likelihood of a person becoming involved in criminal activity.

There are personal factors as well. Dr. Andrews, who is a well-known researcher in Canada, has identified a number of characteristics that are also correlated on a personal basis. Those are: being male, being young, having a criminal record, mixing with criminals, a family relying on welfare, and aimless use of leisure time.

The interesting thing is that some of these factors simply disappear as people grow up. We need to remember that the vast majority of young offenders do not go on to be continuing offenders for the rest of their lives. This is behaviour that is incidental to a particular time of their life. Young males tend to be higher risks than others, to get into behaviour with others that is criminal. Self-report surveys suggest that indeed most people have committed what would legally be a criminal offence in their youth.

So we want to be very careful that we distinguish between those who are going through some kind of a phase and those who have very serious delinquent problems that are going to need more substantial and drastic measures.

For those who are highly deprived of a variety of factors, I think what you're suggesting is absolutely right. Unless you can get a positive role model, unless you can develop positive relationships with people you respect and who are pro-social, then you are at much higher risk to continue in your criminal activity.

So when we target those particular people as opposed to a person who is in some kind of occasional delinquent behaviour that they're largely growing out of, then that's a very important consideration, in our view.

Mr. Ramsay: The reason I'm interested in this area is that compared to my years as a child, I see nowhere in this country that people are living in the kind of poverty that we did, in terms of choice: electrical power, central heating, the choice to travel, the means to travel, and so on. Children today live in a magic world compared to that. You know, they have television, radio, and so on. Yet many of us, most of us, grew up without any negative contact with the justice system at all.

So there have to be other ingredients there. If we look at the cause of crime, I don't know whether the justice system has a mandate to really direct resources at the cause of crime. I think that's for other programs to do, but if it's the responsibility of those programs, they're failing. I'm interested in what works. At one end, what will reduce the cause of crime and at the other end, what do we do with people who do commit crimes and violent crimes? How do we rehabilitate them? What is a fair and just penalty for what they do? We have to address all these aspects.

For instance, in the Young Offenders Act we have a non-disclosure clause. The media cannot disclose the name and identity of a violent young offender, even if he's committed a horrendous offence and even if it's a repeat offence. I have some concerns about that.

I have an example I'd like anyone from the panel to comment on. Do you support that non-disclosure portion of the Young Offenders Act, as far as the news media is concerned?

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Mr. Stewart: Maybe I could start with the point you began with, about people growing up in poverty years ago and not being involved in criminality. I think that is exactly the point that was found in the British study. A poor environment is not necessarily one that's a pro-criminal environment. If you look across Canada, many of the poor areas are ones that have very low crime rates. Where you're going to see the crime rate is where there's poverty amongst considerable wealth, where there's substantial divergence.

About the matter of people being identified, I think we have to recognize the Young Offenders Act as we have it in fact discloses a lot more information than we had before the Young Offenders Act, when -

Mr. Ramsay: My question to the panel is do you support the present non-disclosure section within the Young Offenders Act, which prevents the publishing of the identity of young offenders?

Mr. Stewart: We're opposed to publishing identification of offenders under those circumstances, although we're not opposed in situations in which a person may be a fugitive or eluding arrest by police.

Mr. Ramsay: That's interesting, because we had a very interesting witness yesterday who had a lot to do with sentencing circles and who certainly aroused my interest in a number of the principles and dynamics involved. I asked the witness a specific question about whether or not the non-disclosure principle was eliminated from that whole idea of sentencing circles, and he said it was. As he described it, it became obvious, at least to me, because I was looking for it, that the offender and the victim appear in a community setting, so the identity is revealed. That is part of the healing process. That's part of the rehabilitative process, where the seeds are planted for rehabilitation and healing not only on the part of the offender but also on the part of the victim.

It was clear in yesterday's testimony that when an offender commits an act against some other individual, both are harmed. The offender is harmed as well as the victim. Although I've never been part of a sentencing circle, I would certainly like to see the emotions that come forward, because this witness testified they're very strong emotions.

I think that is what is missing in our justice system today. Of course it can only work with certain people who are prepared to admit their guilt.

I hope that's something our committee will look at more closely, because the setting of a person going into court before a judge, who maybe has a look at a pre-sentence report, has the barest of facts, where the victim is not allowed to make an impact statement, is not conducive to what I hear you folks talking about wanting to achieve. Yet at the same time the sentencing circle recommends to the judge, in my understanding, the punishment, the sentence, that ought to be given. I think that's so important as well, that although we want to move forward in the track of rehabilitation, you did something that was wrong, you hurt some other person, you violated the law, so there is at least a minimum penalty you have to pay; and that they make that recommendation to the judge, which in most cases a judge follows through on.

I just want you to make a comment on that, particularly if any of you are aware of sentencing circles. It's a little like some of the things you're doing in Alberta.

Mr. Stewart: I think the difference here is that we're talking about disclosure, and even within our communities now young offenders are known by their families and their immediate community. But the difference between disclosure that's healing and disclosure that's humiliating is the degree to which you have community support for that process. Our concern is that whereas a young person in his community, with the people he's living with and dealing with.... That kind of healing circle could be a wonderful process to take place. But for us that's distinct from a person's name simply appearing in a newspaper and then his becoming the target of people not interested in his well-being. It simply becomes an instrument of humiliation.

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That's the distinction, and we think there are programs and services that could do the kind of healing things you're talking about without having to go the other route and risk a process that's public humiliation.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Thank you for coming today. It has been very interesting, and certainly the materials you presented are extremely interesting.

We live in an anecdotal world when it comes to this whole issue of young offenders or youth crime, if that's in fact what it is. You've talked about the need to make the public understand that what appears to be the case is not necessarily the case. Certainly, those of us in this life hear from people who take one particular case and blow it up into a general rule. That's the frightening part of what the public perceives.

Also, in North America we're living in an Old Testament world, with the idea of spare the rod and spoil the child. I think it's what you refer to, Dr. MacNevin, as punishment in some way being the equivalent of deterrence. Certainly there's a shift in the public attitude, towards this being what we need a lot more of.

I'm particularly interested in the portion of the printed materials that deals with police charging practices. In 1984 this act came into being. It's my understanding that prior to that there was little in the way of record-keeping. It was at best spotty, at best sporadic, and perhaps it was localized as opposed to province- or nation-wide.

I hate to be anecdotal, but a lawyer recently told me that he had a rash of cases in a community where a bunch of grade 7 boys were running up behind each other. These kids were wearing sweatpants and they would pull them down in the school yard. A well-intentioned police officer came along and stated that this was some form of sexual assault, and it went to young offenders court. He was absolutely horrified to think that what is children's play or perhaps inappropriate behaviour becomes a criminal offence or becomes a matter for the judiciary to pass judgment on.

Maybe, Dr. MacNevin, you could say something about this issue of police charging practices, having regard to what has occurred in Alberta in terms of cost-cutting and what we're seeing in Ontario, which you called strict discipline programs. Policing costs are becoming an issue. I wonder if you can talk about this whole issue of police charging practices and how that might skew the public perception that youth today are worse then they were 10 or 15 or 20 years ago.

Ms Reid-MacNevin: I had occasion to work with the Halton Regional Police last year in supervising a graduate student's thesis where she had access to all the young offender records for a year. I want to share some of that information with you.

I'm giggling about your story about sweatpants, because I had occasion to talk to a youth bureau officer in Guelph recently and she was telling me the same. She calls it the wedgie caper in Guelph. She was wondering about whether she should have laid a charge or not, because it was seen as kids fooling around. I laughed when she told me about it. It was actually girls doing it to the boys. In that case she said you say, ``Well, do you charge or not?'' But if it were the other way around, where boys were doing it to girls, it would be seen as sexual assault. How do you use your discretion without being gender specific?

The whole issue around police discretion in laying a charge is tied into other issues of equality.

With respect to what was going on in the Halton study, one of the most interesting things I found with that study was when the student had access to all of the police officers' notebook writings on the details, as we called them afterwards, of these offences. She coded about 15% of all the cases that were being looked over that year as police occurrence reports and found that in 45% of the cases they weren't laying charges.

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Immediately I assumed that she'd made a horrendous mistake, because our national data tell us that charges are increasing. I asked her to please code some more. She coded another 100 cases and found that they weren't laying charges in 46% of cases. I was encouraged by that because for the most part, we criminologists in John Howard tend to say the police are laying too many charges.

There has been an increase in the laying of charges, but we should be looking at more positive kinds of performance measures. We should be saying that Halton must be doing something right because in these petty offences, like that incident of fraud on a subway sandwich card, the police are not laying charges. They're taking the kids home to their parents. And if there isn't a suitable family placement, we should be strengthening the community response.

So while we do see an increase in police charging practices since the Young Offenders Act, what we haven't been hearing about is the strengthening of police discretion and using the community in a better way not by charging the kids, but by putting them into alternative measures programs.

In Ontario we have a problem with that. In order to use alternative measures the police have to lay a charge before they can refer the kid. If we could even get rid of that notion and have true police screening of kids and cautioning and so on, I think we'd see the numbers going down dramatically.

Mr. Gallaway: Do you believe the police are able...? This may not be a fair question. It may be a terribly vague question. Often we're dealing with children entering adolescence and sometimes - we've both talked about the sweatpants example - we're dealing with inappropriate behaviour as opposed to criminal behaviour.

It seems to me that often we're getting children into our courts who do not in any way have a criminal bent or a criminal intent, and who have not committed a criminal act. They've simply committed behaviour that children have been engaged in for years. It may not be socially appropriate, but it's not criminal.

I'm thinking of another case relayed to me by the same person. It was a case of a community where two 12-year-olds got into a scrap in a school yard. To my recollection, kids have always been doing that but one of the parents insisted that the police lay a charge and, in fact, the police did. The fight was a draw, but it got plugged into our system.

I am very disturbed by this whole business of people calling me and telling me that kids are worse today than they were at some mystical point in the past. I'm not a believer in that. Maybe it's because I have kids.

I also want to talk about the whole issue of the age of culpability. In this country and certainly in the south there is the idea that we should lower the age, that the 12-year-old threshold should become 10. I've even heard people say that 8-year-olds should know what they're doing, that they should be locked up or sent off to boot camp or whatever.

Could you talk about the historical antecedents of how we arrived at the age of 12 for a threshold as opposed to the ages of 11 or of 9?

Ms Reid-MacNevin: When I was doing my graduate work, I started looking at this area when all the deliberations were happening prior to the proclamation of the Young Offenders Act. I looked at some of the hearings on this.

Part of it has to do with common law principles, with what are called doli incapax rules, common law doctrine around the notion of a child of tender years not being able to be accountable and legally culpable. The notion is that you reach a certain point at which you've become a little bit more responsible at around age 10, and by age 12 you're supposed to be able to fully know and understand the nature and the purposes of law. Also, there are some transitional years between the ages of 12 and 14 where legally you can't necessarily understand responsibility all that well.

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It fits very well with what we know in literature around how kids grow and develop. It seems to fit with the notion of cognitive development for formal operational thinking happening at around age twelve. It seems to fit with our understanding of what happens in the school system for most kids as well. They're now in a period of time in which most of them are moving on to junior high school and the expectations and responsibilities that go with it.

If you think about the ability to babysit, you can't do that until you're twelve years of age. So obviously as a society we've said you're not responsible enough as an individual to be able to take a babysitting course until you're twelve years old.

The Chairman: Time's up, sorry.

Mr. Langlois.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: I would like to follow up on the topic raised by my colleague, Mr. Gallaway. The Quebec Civil Code states that any person capable of telling right from wrong is responsible for the harm he or she causes to someone else. Our civil laws and civil legislators presume responsibility in the case of a person who can distinguish right from wrong. Why is it that in a society, we can accept that in civil matters, the thresold age is clearly lower than that recognized in criminal matters, more or less 12 years of age, without calling that age into question in a fundamental way? Do you see any specific reason that explains that attitude?

[English]

Ms Reid-MacNevin: Do you mean between civil and criminal law? No, I think civil law perhaps is inaccurate.

In fact we have evidence to suggest that children are not able to testify or to understand the nature and purpose of what we call wrong-doing. We know in terms of Kohlberg's moral stages of development that a person under the age of even fifteen may not have the ability to comprehend higher-order notions of good and bad.

So perhaps the civil code needs to come in tune with what we know about development in terms of what goes on in a child's ability to know the difference between right and wrong.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: Therefore, you would not object to an amendment of the Quebec Civil Code. Right now, it allows marriage for boys at 14 and for girls at 12 years of age, which is probably an aberration in 1995.

Let me raise a hypothetical question. Would you object to a person younger than 12 years of age being held criminally responsible for his actions if the Crown managed to demonstrate - and that would be the first evidence - that the person was is capable of distinguishing right from wrong at that moment and was capable of judging the consequences of his actions? I know we're getting into an area where the limit would vary according to age, but I'm putting the question to you anyway.

[English]

Ms Reid-MacNevin: Do you mean criminally responsible and subjected to the punishments an adult would receive? Yes, I would object to that.

We may know the notions of right and wrong, but we still believe in our society and hold as a value and a principle that there's a difference between children, adolescents, and adults. Until we decide that at age twelve you're an adult, we need to be thinking about this in terms of phases.

Under the age of twelve there would be no criminal responsibility. Between the ages of twelve and under eighteen, we as a society call it adolescence and feel there's still a need to protect but show some accountability. Then at the age of eighteen you're entering the full force of the law in terms of responsibility and accountability, and we call those people adults.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: In Canada, in some quarters there is a demand for bringing back the death penalty. In the event that it was brought back, would you exclude it in all cases for anyone under 18 years of age?

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[English]

Ms Reid-MacNevin: [Inaudible - Editor] for all people in Canada.

Mr. Stewart: We're talking not about whether a young person is responsible but about whether we use the criminal law as a way of addressing that responsibility. We're saying those who are under twelve can be held accountable and responsible, but it can be done through other measures - child welfare legislation and within the families and institutions - and that's the most appropriate way.

As they grow older, the heavier burden of criminal responsibility applies, but it's a mistake to think that because we don't think the criminal law should apply to people under twelve, that therefore means people under twelve have no accountability and no responsibility. We're saying growing up takes time. Maturing doesn't take place in an instant; it takes place over time. So we have a graduated system of increasing responsibility.

Twelve is the age that was selected, after considerable study in Canada, as the beginning stage of criminal responsibility, and full adult responsibility comes at age eighteen. We don't see any reason to change that.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Knutson, you have five minutes.

Mr. Knutson (Elgin - Norfolk): Thanks.

If I can try to summarize your position, it seems to me you're generally in favour of the act as it sits, and you think the government needs to do a better job pointing out the positives of the act.

You say, as I think virtually every witness who's appeared to us today has said, we need to spend more money and resources on interventions within the community and treatment. Generally custody is an ineffective use of resources, though I know you have your own custody facility, albeit open custody. We're better off spending the money on the streets.

Let me speak from the perspective of an Ontario politician under a Mike Harris government. Do you think it's good enough for us just to say, ``Well, the act works well, and if things are getting messed up, it's at a provincial level. Really the province should do a better job of making sure these programs exist'', when clearly they're not going to?

I note that in Sault Ste. Marie they closed a halfway house and took their people back to jail in shackles. What would you do if you were me in this kind of environment? Public education just doesn't seem to -

Mr. Stewart: In Toronto they sent them back on the TTC and they all went back to prison, which is also a very graphic image.

We're seeing a logical public response to misinformation. Our belief in society has been that the world is not really divided between evil people and not evil people, but there's a tremendous difference between what people understand and the kinds of conclusions they reach.

If you believe public protection can be achieved through incarceration in a system in which people are serving on average 78 days, then I think there's a problem in reasoning. But people in the community don't make that distinction. They don't understand the distinction between provincial and federal. They don't understand the costs of incarceration and so on, so they can very easily be misled. Then what happens is this tremendous burden falls on you and also on organizations such as our own to try to provide facts under those circumstances.

Our view is we don't have to appeal strongly to moral kinds of arguments. We feel the system we're proposing is quite a rational set of proposals, in the context of today, that is in fact supported by most people when they understand what's going on. But a criminal justice system tends to be both a secret system and a poorly understood system.

The degree to which people understand the choices involved, the implications and consequences of taking a particular course of action, and the fact that there's a considerable reason to be optimistic about what can be achieved in the criminal justice system is the degree to which they'll support these kinds of alternatives.

My own experience in relation to that particular issue is there's been considerable public criticism of that provincial government decision. Certainly it seems that way from my perspective. I haven't seen any newspaper commentary in favour of it.

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Mr. Knutson: It's consistent with a number of other activities that have left them very high in the polls, but we can debate that.

Since I have time, let me ask you another question about the issue of age. I would take it you are generally not in favour of lowering the age. This is not a true story but it could be: Suppose an 11-year-old in my community burns down a house. If he's not a child in need of protection, the Children's Aid Society will say they're sorry, they don't have the resources to deal with this kid. He may come from a perfectly normal home, but has just decided to do something for whatever reasons. The psychiatric services are virtually unavailable, yet the community is saying this guy burned down a house, and the police will tell the community they can't touch him either. As a policy-maker, or a law-maker, what would you tell the community?

Mr. Stewart: I think there's always going to be a case of someone just slightly under the age no matter where we are. We've established this law based on age, not on a measure of maturity. If a 4-year-old burns down a house, no one talks about throwing him into the criminal justice system. At some point, we have to draw some kind of a line and age is the logical way. Twelve has been a reasoned decision. It's a reasonable age. There's very little serious crime that takes place under the age of twelve. As long as we can rely on criminal justice, our concern has been that we will not develop the other kinds of non-criminal-justice social services that are important and instrumental.

It's very difficult to conceive of a criminal justice system that does not use an age. Whatever age we determine, there will always be someone slightly under that age who appears to be culpable. I think that's just the reality of trying to live with a very crude system, as a criminal justice system always is.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Knutson.

Mr. Ramsay, you have five minutes.

Mr. Ramsay: Could anyone on the panel tell me what the murder statistics were last year for young offenders?

Mr. Stewart: Thirty-five.

Mr. Ramsay: Is that the average? Is it going up or down?

Mr. Stewart: Actually it's better to look at 12- to 17-year-olds rather than at young offenders. Over the last twenty years -

Mr. Ramsay: Aren't they young offenders?

Mr. Stewart: They are now, but they weren't prior to the establishment of act. So looking at the same age group over twenty years in Canada, the homicide rate has ranged from a high of 68 to a low of 35. In fact, last year was the lowest in twenty years.

Mr. Ramsay: What was it last year?

Mr. Stewart: The average is about fifty.

Mr. Ramsay: But what was it last year?

Mr. Stewart: Last year it was 35.

Mr. Ramsay: And the year before that?

Mr. Stewart: It was 58. The actual numbers have been quite stable over twenty years.

Mr. Ramsay: What can we anticipate for this year?

Mr. Stewart: We could see almost a 100% increase and still be within the norm. The numbers are so small that looking a percentage change between 35 and 54, which are both within the norm over the twenty years, could give us quite a startling kind of headline. There is, however, no reason to see this as any kind of trend.

Mr. Ramsay: Publicly speaking, though, there is a basis for some people to be concerned just in that one area alone. You can comment on that, but the question I'd like to ask - I'm almost at the end of my time - is based on the fact that I am convinced alcohol abuse is a major contributing factor to crime.

I would like to know what your organization is doing to warn society about the consequences of alcohol abuse and its contributing factor to crime. What are you doing as an organization to say to the people who advertise that if you're going to drink, don't drive, get a designated driver who will dump you off drunk at your home, yet when you walk in, your spouse and your children are at your mercy. What are you doing, if anything, to attempt to alert people that this needs to be done, that there has to at least be a standing against this kind of thing, this abuse of alcohol that contributes so much to crime?

Ms Leonard: I can share two programs in Alberta with you. The John Howard Society in Red Deer offers something called ``Youth Offering Others Their Help''. It's a program not for young offenders, but for youth in the community as a whole. It is a substance abuse prevention program funded by Health Canada, and it's having excellent results in terms of getting kids who have had substance abuse problems talking to kids who are on the brink of a problem. That's a direct intervention program.

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Our crime prevention materials dealing with social development talk a great deal about substance-abuse-linked crime, so we are doing that kind of education by offering workshops on crime prevention across the province using our materials. Also, the John Howard Society in Edmonton offers a substance abuse prevention information program at the attendance centre in Edmonton.

Mr. Ramsay: We see very significant advertising about the dangers of cigarette use, of tobacco use. I don't see the same kind of resources directed towards alcohol consumption in relation to its contribution to crime. And anything like that should not only be directed at youths, but also at their parents and neighbours, and perhaps even their school teachers and so forth. Is there any significant effort being made by your organization in this area?

Mr. Stewart: I can address that.

The last two pages of our brief list by name programs the John Howard Society is currently operating across Canada. Many of these programs are directed at youth and at schools and they address a variety of issues, including drinking. Perhaps one of the important factors relating to that, particularly with young people who are at a pre-drinking stage, is the whole issue of peer influence. Drinking and peer influence are very important because these kinds of behaviour often go together.

There's no question in our experience that alcohol is by far a much greater problem related to criminal activity than are drugs. For the number of offenders we see who have drug problems, there are far more still who have alcohol problems. I certainly think the evidence is there.

We have many very-young-age programs, particularly in schools, and basically the most important aspect of that is to get children to understand they must think for themselves, that they must be very careful about developing and respecting pro-social kinds of attitudes and about not being drawn into the groups that use alcohol frequently as a bridge to other kinds of activities.

But you're absolutely right. That is a critical issue. We haven't been able to evaluate what that result is in the long term, considering that we don't have any feasible way of doing so, but we certainly believe strongly that it is an important educative function, particularly for young people who are not getting that message at home. To be able to get access to schools to carry out those programs there is very important.

Mr. Ramsay: Do I have any time left, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: No, you don't. Thank you Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Regan.

Mr. Regan: I want to first of all read to you a brief passage from an article in the July 1995 issue of Atlantic Monthly. It's entitled ``The Crisis of Public Order'', and it relates to the situation in the United States. I would, however, like your comments on whether or not you feel we in Canada can learn from what's happening there, or at least from what's described in this article. Secondly, I would like to know whether or not you feel Canada is different in terms of how things are happening here. If so, how is it different?

It says this about the U.S.:

Could I have your comments on that, please?

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Mr. Stewart: The fact is that youth crime is related to the number of young males in the population. That's a very important factor, and it's important to understand that so when that changes we're not excessively alarmed by trends. But I think the important message there is that the differences between Canada and United States are very important. We haven't seen that happen in Canada yet.

We've also seen tremendous disintegration in many parts of the United States, in the cities in particular. Not only do they have those problems, they have the problems of all the other factors we were discussing earlier, particularly male unemployment rates, drugs, single-family homes - there's been a huge explosion in single-family homes in the United States, and a tremendous division between poverty and wealth in the United States. It seems to me that the conditions in the United States are very instructive to us in Canada.

We could well see changes in the population. We're seeing some of it. With the second baby boom in Canada, we could see increases in the young male population. It's really important for us to think very carefully now of preventive programs to address those factors, which in combination with others can have an impact.

So we should be alarmed by what we see in the United States, but we should also be very careful that we preserve what's different in Canada. We have not gone that route. We have some very important differences in our social structure, in our educational systems, in the make-up of our communities, in the distribution of wealth, and so on, which I think have been demonstrated to be exceptionally valuable, and indeed preventive, in terms of crime. While we should be alarmed, we should also be reassured that we may know something the Americans don't know.

Ms Reid-MacNevin: May I add something to what you've said? In the written materials we gave you about this, at one point I made an argument about the projections for the number of adults and the number of young people. The argument you have to make about this is that there's been an increasing number of adults compared with young people over the last number of years. Until the year 2000 it's projected there will be more adults than young people. Whenever that occurs, with our notion of protective ideology, people have a tendency to intervene and say something about what goes on in the younger generation. There's more state intervention in times when there are more adults around to go ``pooh, pooh'' to the youth culture.

It may not necessarily relate to homicide, but we have to be careful in our analysis of minor property offences. We're saying we have to be prudent and we have to be cautious, because youth can get out of control, and this is a really important thing we do in terms of over-institutionalizing, over-protecting, if you will.

When you talk about those projections, it just twigged something for me in terms of popular culture and that notion as well.

The Chairman: I have one question for you before we wind up. You referred to 35 homicides last year. When adults commit homicide, there's generally one person who's charged for a death. Sometimes there are two. Is it not true that with young people it is not unusual to have four or five youths charged with one death...more often than with adults? In other words, with the 35 homicide charges that were laid last year, do we know how many went to conviction in the end result? Do we even know how many deaths occurred to lay the 35 charges? In other words, were there 35 deaths, or were there 20 deaths, or were there 10 deaths?

Mr. Stewart: The simple answer is I don't have that information today. What I think is important is trends. There's no reason to believe that way of counting has changed over the years. From the point of view of taking initiatives that might change homicides - and of course none of us want to see any - there is no basis to feel homicides among young people are either increasing or decreasing in any significant way over a long period. You're quite right, these data do not tell us, and I cannot tell you, exactly how many people were involved either as offenders or as victims. But there's no reason to believe the method of counting has changed over the last twenty years.

The Chairman: Is it not true the homicides that occurred last year, the 35 you said were charged...when you consider the percentage of youths we have in our population and compare it with the adult population, their share of homicides is less than the adults' share? In other words, the rate of homicides among adults is higher than among youth.

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Mr. Stewart: Oh, yes. It's considerably higher.

The Chairman: Thank you. I have no further questions.

Thank you very much for coming here today. It was very informative, and I'm sure the materials will be very helpful to us. Again, thank you very much.

Mr. Stewart: Thank you for having us.

The Chairman: The meeting is adjourned until tomorrow. We'll be in room 308.

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