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Introduction
CANADA'S WAR ON CRIME, SIMILAR TO THAT IN MANY OTHER COUNTRIES, IS quickly becoming a war against youth. From varying proposals to reintroduce the death penalty for young killers to the implementation of mandatory boot camps for all young offenders, Canadian society is embarking on a crusade to increase punishment for children, ostensibly in the hope of curbing crime. The focal point for this neoconservative-based law-and-order campaign is the Young Offenders Act. Critics of the act argue that it is too lenient, that youth are not deterred because of the soft punishments determined by the act-in favor of excessive human rights provisions - and that the act releases adolescent dangerous offenders into the society to become adult offenders.
The generalized law-and-order mindset in Canada, which currently typifies many other countries, seems to stand in contradistinction to the overall principles of Canada's Young Offenders Act (YOA), wherein prevention and rehabilitation are constructive and punishment and criminalization are ultimately destructive to the young offender and to the society. The act, as a progressive, libertarian, and compassionate approach to youth, attempts to use community-based noncarceral alternatives to formal punishment, to provide rather short-term maximum sentences for even the most dangerous offenders, to minimize labeling through ensuring anonymity via publication bans, and to provide that the civil rights of the young offender are met through adequate legal and parental representation in court.
Fiscal realities, however, have left the goals of the YOA unmet in many respects. Programs and organization systems that were supposed to replace the formal justice system are poorly realized and police and court officials are left with little alternative but to use the formal legal code in ministering to young offenders. The state's inability to support the spirit and intent of the YOA has given rightwing political movements ample fodder for their "we told you so" agenda. With the rise of street kids (a social/political problem, not a criminal phenomenon) and with a profusion of highly publicized violent crimes committed by youth, the "war on young offenders" is a cause célèbre that politicians seem unable to resist.
I contend that we are on the verge of an acute "moral panic" in this country that, if allowed to continue, will result in the sweeping indictment of...