Sociology 2267A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Young Offender, Juvenile Delinquency, Young Offenders Act
31 Aug 2020
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SOC 2267 650
Week 1: Lesson 2 - Measuring Youth Crime in Canada: An Elusive Challenge
Learning Objectives
• Understand the importance of social and historical influences on the evolution of youth
justice and the measuring of youth crime in Canada
• Understand how we define youth crime
• Recognize that measuring and recording youth crime is influenced by formal social
control mechanisms
• Describe some of the facts and trends of youth crime over the past several decades
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of official statistics in relation to self-report
and victimization data
• Critically reflect on what the three measurement methods tell us about youth crime as
well as what they do not tell us
Introduction
• Typical questions criminologists are asked about youth crime and justice:
1. How serious and how common is it?
2. Is it getting worse?
3. Is the legislation too lenient?
4. Who is committing these criminal and/or deviant acts and why do they do it?
• To better understand, explain, and predict youth crime, we must draw from a variety of
sources of measurement:
1. Official accounts of social control (i.e. police, courts, corrections)
2. Unofficial sources (i.e. self report studies, victimization surveys)
• Dark figure of crime: incidents of crime/delinquency undetected or
unreported by the police
• Youth at risk: Young people at risk of offending or being victimized
Defining Youth Crime
• Shifts in concepts and legal terminology
◦ Juvenile delinquency (JDA): Any child who violates any provision of the Criminal
Code or any federal or provincial statue
◦ Young person --> Young offender (YOA/YCJA)
• A young offender is a young person who has committed an offence
• Counted as "youth crime"
Legal Definition
• The traditional focus of criminologists has been on the legal rather than on the
psychological or sociological definitions of youth crime
• The legal definition of youth crime focuses primarily on predatory and aggressive
behaviour that is deemed punishable by law
Limitations in Assuming a Purely Legal Definition
• Theoretical insight: Exclusion of victimless crime
SOC 2267 650
• Demographic: Age distribution can affect rates
• Case filtration and dismissal: Often eliminated
• Policy and administrative curation: Interoperation of YCJA varies among and within
provinces
• Method of gathering statistics: Statistics Canada does not enumerate all crimes;
statistics gathered with agenda
• Reporting rates: Related to society's attitude
• Public perception: Affects the way that legislation is used
• Technologies: Complex crimes can do undetected
Measuring Delinquency: A Historical Overview
• It is important to have a sense of history about youth crime and youth crime trends
• Three periods in Canadian history relating to youth crime and its measurement
◦ Pre-confederation
◦ State intervention
◦ The 20th century
Delinquency Trends: Pre-Confederation to the Nineteenth Century
• Pre-Confederation
◦ No reliable official statistics were kept prior to 1876
◦ Accounts of juvenile delinquency were obtainable only through limited
newspaper sources that were often based on observation
◦ The delinquency problem in pre-Confederation Canada cannot be accurately
quantified
• What we do know: Boys were disproportionately represented, crime
occurred at higher rates in urban centres, and familial problems were
associated with crime
SOC 2267 650
State Intervention: The First Step to Defining and Officially Counting Delinquency
• The growth of state intervention in the late-nineteenth century
◦ Urbanization and industrialization
◦ Platt (1977): The "child-saving" movement in the US and Canada
◦ Universal public education and compulsory schooling
◦ Growing concern with addressing "the root causes of delinquent behaviour" 9J.J.
Kelso, W.L. Scott, and the JDA)
Document Summary
Week 1: lesson 2 - measuring youth crime in canada: an elusive challenge. Defining youth crime: shifts in concepts and legal terminology. Juvenile delinquency (jda): any child who violates any provision of the criminal. Code or any federal or provincial statue: young person --> young offender (yoa/ycja, a young offender is a young person who has committed an offence, counted as "youth crime" Limitations in assuming a purely legal definition: theoretical insight: exclusion of victimless crime. It is important to have a sense of history about youth crime and youth crime trends: three periods in canadian history relating to youth crime and its measurement, pre-confederation, state intervention, the 20th century. 100,000 aged 12-17; and (3) the percentage of change in total youth rate between reporting year and previous year. Demographic facts of young offenders: gender: predominately male. Measuring youth violent and non-violent crime: non-violent crime.
