Lawyer criticizes proposed youth justice changes

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper really wants to reduce youth crime, he should focus on ending poverty and helping parents and teens overcome addiction, says a Whitehorse lawyer who works with troubled youth on a daily basis.

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper really wants to reduce youth crime, he should focus on ending poverty and helping parents and teens overcome addiction, says a Whitehorse lawyer who works with troubled youth on a daily basis.

Fia Jampolsky says harsher penalties and attempts at “public shaming” would only aggravate the problem.

“If they deal with the root causes - socio-economic issues, poverty, FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) - then they will see less youth crime,” Jampolsky, a legal aid lawyer with the Community Law Clinic, said in an interview Wednesday.

Jampolsky was one of the people chosen to speak at an international conference on improving the justice system for people with FASD, held in Whitehorse last month.

Jampolsky challenges Harper’s pledge, made last week, to rewrite parts of the existing Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA).

If re-elected on Oct.14, Harper proposes to introduce maximum life sentences for youth who commit first- and second-degree murder, and sentences of up to 14 years for youth who commit other violent crimes.

The Conservative leader also said the names of teens over the age of 14 convicted of rape, murder and manslaughter should not be protected by publication bans.

In the existing act, the names of all young people, victims and perpetrators alike, are kept out of the media unless a judge orders otherwise.

Harper would see the names of some young criminals published upon conviction.

The proposed changes are “completely contrary to reducing youth crime,“Jampolsky said.

Stricter sentences and the publication of names wouldn’t discourage young people from committing crimes, she said. That’s because most young people at risk of breaking the law wouldn’t even know the changes have been made and therefore wouldn’t be taking the new laws into account when making potentially bad decisions, she added.

“Publishing the names of kids is completely irrelevant to the issue,” Jampolsky stressed.

Furthermore, she said, the changes go against the principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, implemented in 2003, which seeks to “prevent crime by addressing the circumstances underlying a young person’s offending behaviour,” as stated in the act’s preamble.

“They are going against the preamble and the purpose of the youth Criminal Justice Act,” Jampolsky said. “They are just turning that around on its face.”

In 2003, the YCJA replaced the 1980s-era Young Offenders Act, which had been widely criticized for being both too harsh and too lenient.

In creating the act, legislators attempted to address both sides of the debate.

The act reduced the age at which a teenager could be charged as an adult from 16 to 14. It also gave judges the discretion to impose adult sentences on youth who commit very serious crimes or who chronically reoffend.

On the other side of the coin, the act focuses heavily on rehabilitating youth through community service, counselling and education, instead of punishing them with jail time.

Jampolsky said abandoning the path laid by such a young piece of legislation would be presumptuous, only serving to perpetuate the root causes of youth crime.

This sentiment is shared by many of Harper’s critics, including Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe. He has called prison the “university of crime”, and said sending young people to adult institutions would put them in grave danger of abuse from other prisoners.

“Let’s not hide it,” he said. “We know there is that kind of problem in prison, and sending kids there is terrible.”

The rate of violent crimes committed by youth in the Yukon is twice as high as the national statistics, although it is the lowest of the northern territories.

Although there are no statistics available on how many people charged under the YCJA suffer from FASD, anecdotal evidence suggests the number is disturbingly high.

Judges, lawyers and caseworkers at last month’s FASD/justice conference all agreed that upwards of 50 per cent of the cases they see in the Yukon involve a person with FASD, often under the age of 18.

The territorial Department of Justice will hold a series of follow-up discussions on the issue this month.