Bill C-4 (Historical)

Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders)

An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the sentencing and general principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as well as its provisions relating to judicial interim release, adult and youth sentences, publication bans, and placement in youth custody facilities. It defines the terms “violent offence” and “serious offence”, amends the definition “serious violent offence” and repeals the definition “presumptive offence”. It also requires police forces to keep records of extrajudicial measures used to deal with young persons.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Attorney General, for a very good presentation.

I would like to clear up a couple of things. You have a federal counterpart, Rob Nicholson, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. You would expect him to be an advocate for his bill, Bill C-4, and appear before us suggesting that people were asking for this kind of legislation and that in fact attorneys general were asking for this kind of legislation, so I have three little questions for you.

My understanding is that attorneys general across the country wanted something done with some of the very sensible recommendations in the Nunn Commission of Inquiry report, and that some of those items have been dealt with in this act. However, much of this act is outside the Nunn commission recommendations. It is essentially a program of the government with respect to inculcating adult criminal sanctions into the YCJA, as you mentioned.

My first question is this: do you feel that this law responds adequately to both the Nunn recommendations and to the concerns of attorneys general across the country, and specifically the concerns of New Brunswick?

Second, what level of consultation did you have with the federal Attorney General on this matter?

Third, you mentioned a direct federal cut to a Fredericton program that is very near and dear to you, a very preventive early intervention program. At the same time, we know through Kevin Page's work that the cost of some of the legislation the government is bringing forward in terms of prison costs is extraordinary. Some of these sentences rely on provincial resources, but what we haven't received yet is any indication from any province.

Where does the rubber hit the road for provinces like New Brunswick? What is your estimation of the costs of the Conservative tough-on-crime agenda to the Province of New Brunswick? I left there this morning, and unless you found offshore oil or gas in the meantime, how are you or we going to afford it?

[Kelly Lamrock, Minister of Social Development and Attorney General, Government of New Brunswick]

That sounds great, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

First of all, thanks for the opportunity to do this. I'm here today in the hope that I can share with you maybe two unique perspectives in one presentation on Bill C-4, as well as share a little bit about the New Brunswick experience.

I come with two perspectives that might be helpful to the committee. One, I believe I'm the only provincial attorney general who also has responsibility for youth at risk with a social ministry. Some of what we are doing with success in fighting poverty, reducing youth crime, and reducing youth recidivism may be helpful to the committee in understanding how we actually can be tough on crime by preventing crime and making sure that young people at risk don't stay at risk.

Second, let me also say clearly that from the perspective of New Brunswick, the current YCJA is working for us. We are seeing youth crime go down. We are seeing reductions in the number of young people who are repeating offences. I'm hoping that we can share with you a bit about why that's happening in New Brunswick and also talk about some of the ways in which Bill C-4 doesn't just layer on an additional level of ways to deal with young offenders, but instead may prevent us in New Brunswick from doing some of the things that are working. As a province that's had some success, we're hopeful that our success will be respected through this process.

I would start by saying this: it seems absolutely essential that we have a youth justice system that is aimed at the unique needs of young offenders. Justice that is served in a one-size-fits-all approach does not work. We know that with young people, for example, there's more time to reform their behaviour. We know that if they are growing up in poverty or have mental health issues or have issues of abuse or neglect at home, those experiences may be more formative and therefore may affect their behaviour more than they would affect an adult who has had more time and perspective.

Young people are also less aware of, and think less of, long-term consequences. Deterrence doesn't work as well with young people. I think any parent who's ever had the experience of saying to their kid, “But if you don't study for your test, you won't get into university and you won't have a good job”, knows that they say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, but that's off in the future. I'm immortal and I'm young.”

The fact is that we in New Brunswick have been tough on crime, but we've done it by taking the approach that being tough on crime doesn't mean what you do after the crime's already been committed; it's what you do to make sure the crime doesn't happen in the first place. For us that means being tough on crime, and we are. For instance, we've adopted statutes that allow for forfeiture if you are an absentee landlord and you're allowing your property to be used for anything from selling drugs to profiteering from child pornography. We now have the power to seize that property and crack down on absentee landlords. We have a tenant protection act that allows the state to evict those who are dragging neighbourhoods down with anti-social behaviour. That's being tough on crime.

We're also tough on the causes of crime with aggressive reform of our social assistance system. We have aggressive interventions, including more mental health resources early on, making sure the courts are trained, and now integrated service delivery that makes sure we have school-based intervention teams that spot kids who are abused or neglected at home to allow them to get services in an integrated way, whether it's mental health, help for their parents at home, or help in the educational system.

If I may, I will quickly raise five concerns with proposed Bill C-4 that may stand in the way of our doing what the evidence shows is working in New Brunswick.

First I would say this: if you look at clause 8 of the bill, this is one of the first times the Parliament of Canada has proposed a bill that criminalizes intervention. I say that because this bill allows judges, when sentencing, to look at past participation in programs for substance abuse or mental health, or even at things as simple as police warnings.

Here's our concern about that: when we have a young person who has committed a non-violent offence and who was not deliberately inflicting harm on another, we want to get that person into our intervention programs as quickly as possible. We don't want them lawyering up. We don't want a long trial process. We want to get them into that intervention. By now saying that those interventions can count against them, you'll take away our ability to do what works.

As long as they accept responsibility and participate in these programs, we can begin to start the process of turning their lives around. By saying that participating--whether in sentencing circles, whether in community service, whether in counselling--now counts against kids later on in sentencing, we're going to have more kids lawyering up, we're going to go to more trials, and we're going to have kids getting help far less quickly. From our perspective, it would be a mistake to criminalize participation in the very programs that the evidence suggests are working in New Brunswick to keep people safer and to make sure that they don't do it again.

The second concern, I would say, is that this bill may actually defeat its own purpose by blurring the distinction between intentionally violent crimes and those that may be simply reckless or risky behaviour. If the definition of participating in risky behaviour were applied to all young people, I'm not so sure it wouldn't take care of most of us in this room at age 16—I'll certainly say that myself.

The fact of the matter is this: there is nothing wrong, when you have a young person who is intentionally, wilfully, and coldly inflicting harm on others, in making sure they're tried as an adult. That's the right thing to do. I'm a dad, I have kids, and I want them protected too. But to mix the criteria where the wilful infliction of harm is now treated the same as simply engaging in behaviour that's reckless or risky, where the line hasn't been crossed into deciding to hurt somebody, not only runs against everything we know, but it may actually undo some of the tough on crime agenda that's actually behind this bill, because instead of being very specific and directive to judges as to when as attorneys general we can have our prosecutors get that young person into the adult system, it now has actually muddied the waters. Now the definition isn't clear for judges. The judges have more discretion to keep dangerous offenders in the youth system, yet the youth system itself has been effectively destroyed.

So I think, frankly, because of some very loose drafting around what constitutes getting somebody into the adult system, as an attorney general I'd be very concerned that it will actually be harder for us to get truly dangerous youth into the adult system if this bill passes.

The third concern is that this probably undoes a large part of the reason to have a youth system. If we take a look, for instance, at clause 7, adding deterrence to the act as a consideration, what we try to do as attorneys general is, very early on, have as many tools as possible that actually meet our needs. We should have an adult system that is tough on crime, that emphasizes responsibility, that cracks down on violent offenders and actually makes sure they stay behind bars where they can't hurt somebody—no question. We also need a youth system that is based on the unique needs of young offenders, and that means, in fact, we put more of an emphasis on rehabilitation, because frankly, we know that the 16-year-old who steals a car is not going to be locked up for life but is going to be back on the streets.

As an attorney general and, frankly, as a dad, my interest is this: when we turn that person loose at 18, 19, or 22 years of age, what kind of citizen is he? What have we done to change that outcome? Being tough on crime doesn't mean waiting until he's 22 and hurts somebody again and locking him up. Being tough on crime means making sure he doesn't do it in the first place.

By adding deterrence and denunciation and making the youth system more like an adult system, we've destroyed the whole point of having a system that works to prevent young people from reoffending, and at the same time makes it harder for us to get adult offenders into the adult system.

The youth system is there for a reason, and the more you try to make it like the adult system, the more you then blur the distinction; if we can't get people into the right tools for rehabilitation, then you've effectively hurt our ability as attorneys general to deliver justice that works and protects people.

I might make two more general comments that aren't tied to the legislation.

I would like to share with you some of the concerns that we have at the provincial level.

The Government of New Brunswick believes that adopting this proposed legislation would only make matters worse for young persons and other residents of the province. Just recently, the federal government did away with the Youth Option Program in New Brunswick. This program offered youths who were at risk in a regular school setting and at home alternative methods of learning so that they did not turn to criminal behaviour.

Requiring provinces that are not rich, such as New Brunswick, to spend money on locking kids up will take away from things we've seen, just like the federal cuts to programs like Youth Options and to intensive programs like Portage, which allow us to intervene with those who have substance abuse problems. If we have to spend money putting people in prison, frankly, in a province like New Brunswick we don't have an extra dollar to spend on things that aren't backed up by evidence. You're going to require us to take away from some of the programs that are working in New Brunswick, programs that intervene on mental health issues and substance abuse.

I would be remiss if I didn't share with you the report of Bernard Richard, our provincial child and youth advocate, around Ashley Smith. Sometimes it's easy to lose this in philosophical arguments, but there are risks with the wrong approach in youth justice.

Ashley was a young teenager who originally was arrested for mischief. She was throwing crab apples at people out of a tree. Because she did not comply very often with the directions given in jail, she wound up in higher and higher levels of custody. What we now know about her case is that by putting her into a system that did not have the staff, training, or resources to recognize mental health issues early, ultimately we didn't rehabilitate that young person and we didn't keep her safe. What happened is that Ashley sadly and tragically committed suicide. That happened because we were too quick to steer her out of a system with the right kinds of supports and into a system that measured only whether or not she complied with the orders given to her, which we now know, with the benefit of hindsight, mental health issues had made almost certain wouldn't happen.

People die if we get it wrong. People die if we get it wrong by being too slow to incarcerate. People also die if we get it wrong by being too quick to incarcerate. From our perspective, perhaps I can offer some alternatives in which the Government of New Brunswick would be interested. Let us have two distinct systems--one focused on rehabilitation, and one in which detention and punishment start to become more important. Give us more discretion, not less, to steer young people into that system and to steer violent offenders into the adult system. And work with us. Help give us the tools. Don't cut the programs that help us intervene in these kids' lives, but help us to have the resources to appropriately detect and intervene, and to train staff on issues as wide-ranging as mental health, abuse at home, and substance abuse that can lead to failure.

I will close with this thought, Mr. Chair. Sometimes when we study these sorts of bills, we tend to look at a bad example of a young person gone wrong and ask what went wrong; if we look at the cases of young people who were rehabilitated and ask what went right, we are probably more likely to do it right in the future. In New Brunswick we are funding some programs that are doing it right, and we don't want to lose the ability to do that.

With that, I thank the committee and stand open to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting 18 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. For the record, today is Tuesday, May 25, 2010.

You have before you the agenda for today. Today we're continuing with our review of Bill C-4--Sébastien's Law--an act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

Members of the committee, let me offer a note about this study. As of the deadline of May 14, a total of 44 witnesses had been submitted by members of the committee. A week later, a week after the deadline, we received another list from the Bloc. There are a number of issues we have to address. One is how we manage the witnesses we have; secondly, what happens with the Bloc's witness list; and thirdly, establishing a date for a steering committee. Those are all issues that are important, because we're trying to manage this and move the bill forward.

Given that we haven't been able to have a steering committee meeting because of conflicts in scheduling, I am proposing that we schedule eight witnesses per meeting—in each two-hour meeting we would have eight witnesses—and try to move them forward quickly. Also, I hope to complete clause-by-clause by June 15. That would give us seven more meetings for some 40 witnesses plus clause-by-clause.

I don't know what the will of the committee is. I want to manage this in a way that is effective, that is efficient, that doesn't shortchange anybody, but that at the same time doesn't drag it out unnecessarily.

What's your feeling?

Monsieur Ménard.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

The primary stated purpose of Bill C-4 is the protection of society, and the secondary is to make it easier to detain violent and reckless youth. Is it safe for me to assume that you disagree with these philosophical objectives of Bill C-4?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you.

The stated purposes of Bill C-4 are that the protection of society is the principal goal, and the secondary goal is to make it easier to detain—

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Yes, I'm talking about Bill C-4 and clause 21.

[Michèle Goyette]

So this is Bill C-4.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

At the beginning of your evidence you said that you believe Bill C-4, this particular legislation, as it relates to the prolific offender appears to address the individual concerned--in other words, the person who appears to require more concentrated institutional or behaviour-amending treatments. Would that be correct? Does it sound as though that's going towards where you were...?

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you. That's quite all right.

Can you tell me, to your knowledge, how many victims of crime have received from your organization a copy of Bill C-4? Do you know?

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Did I understand correctly that in your analysis you think that Bill C-4 may be useful for dealing with these 5% to 6% of offenders?

[Arlène Gaudreault, President, Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes]

Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Arlène Gaudreault. I am here as President of the Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes. I am a founding member of the association and I have been its president since 1988. I have been very involved in the field of victimology for about 30 years. I have taught at the École de criminologie since 1993. My work has been recognized by the ministère de la Justice, which awarded me the Prix de la justice. I have also received an award for my work from the Commission des services juridiques du Québec and the Canadian Criminal Justice Association. As an expert, I am a member of the advisory committee to the Policy Centre for Victim Issues of the Department of Justice of Canada.

I would like to thank you, on behalf of the Association, for inviting us and hearing our views in this consultation. I am simply going to tell you that since 1984, the Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes has been working to create a justice system that is fairer and more humane to victims of crime. In all these years, in everything we have done and said, we have always been concerned with the difficult balance that must be struck between protecting victims and rehabilitating offenders. We have always kept respect for fundamental rights, both of victims and of offenders, in mind. For these reasons, it is difficult to support the aims of Bill C-4, C-4, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts..

It is our opinion that this bill marks a backwards step in relation to the practices and expertise that Quebec has developed, in rehabilitating young offenders and reintegrating them into society. It is also a significant break from the philosophy for the treatment of these young people. It opens the door to an undesirable shift toward incorporating measures modeled on the adult criminal justice system into the youth criminal justice system.

We wanted to meet with the committee primarily to express our concerns and questions regarding this bill, in response to the needs of victims of crime. Protection of society is a fundamental value that must be preserved. In light of our mission, we are particularly concerned about victims' safety.

We do not believe that calling for a more enforcement-oriented justice system will automatically translate into greater protection for society in general, and victims in particular. We are not the only ones who think this. Other organizations and people who advocate for the rights of victims in Canada share our belief. In his recent report entitled "Toward a Greater Respect for Victims in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act", Steve Sullivan, who is the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, wrote:

Victims understand, better than most, that nearly all offenders will eventually be released from prison. Given their personal experiences, they know the impact violence can have, which is why many victims sincerely hope that offenders will be rehabilitated while in prison. The best protection victims, their families and the community will have is if the offender can learn to modify negative behaviour before he or she is released.

I think those comments are relevant if we consider them in relation to the bill currently being considered. What do victims want? If victims still feel marginalized in the criminal justice system, if they are still disillusioned, that cannot be explained solely and primarily by the fact that sentences are not harsh. Responses to the needs of victims must be addressed from a much broader perspective than sentencing. That is what we would hope to hear.

In 1988, the report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human writes entitled "Victims' Rights, A Voice, Not A Veto", summarized the legitimate aspirations of victims this way. They ask to be able to participate at all stages of the proceedings, they ask for information about how the justice system functions and they want to know about the programs available to them. They are critical of the uneven availability of programs and services and they want the imbalance they see in the criminal justice system restored.

The question is, when we are talking about the needs of victims where the offender is a minor, how do we meet those needs, when we know that a large proportion of victims, 52%, are young people, and that 20% of those victims are family members? Those figures are taken from Juristat statistics. How do we deal with victims of serious violence and victims who have lost a loved one at present? How much support are they offered in the process, in Canada?

What services are they offered in the courthouses and in the community? How can victims in Canada learn about the what progress a young person is making in closed custody or on probation? How can they know whether that young person has made progress in their program?

I would say that we do not have a good understanding of the special needs of victims who are dealing with the youth criminal justice system and how they are treated. We have no answer to the questions I have just asked, even though they relate to the well-being and physical and psychological security of the victims and the people close to them. Nor do we have data about the services and programs that enable victims to recover. As well, we don't know, in Canada, how we are meeting our obligations to them, and that is a matter of some concern.

The committee noted the imbalance between resources for offenders and resources for victims. We wonder to what extent that imbalance will continue or even worsen, when we see the budgets that are going to be allocated to enforcement as compared to the resources spent on initiatives to help victims of crime.

Victims are not a monolithic group, nor do they follow the same process or have the same needs or the same expectations of the justice system. When we listen to them we must respect their differences. To argue otherwise is reductive.

Unfortunately, victims are often associated with enforcement programs. Victims' cause is increasingly exploited and used as a tool for partisan purposes by political parties of all stripes. Victims' rights are used to legitimize more crime control, but that discourse does not express the position of all victims, with the nuances that must be recognized. It does not serve the cause of victims, and we reject Canada's decision to take this path, in particular in this bill.

As noted by Allan Young, a professor and eminent legal expert who did a study for the Department of Justice of Canada in 2001, there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that victims want harsher sentencing. In fact, studies show the opposite. Initial research involving victims done in the early 1980s highlights the fact that victims are not excessively punitive, any more than people who are not victims. That is also the case among victims of violent crime.

In a letter sent recently to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mr. Sullivan recalled that measures that focus on enforcement and harsher prison sentences do not, and I quote, make any real difference in victims' lives.

In fact, every day we receive telephone calls telling us that responding to victims' needs does not just mean keeping offenders in prison longer. In our associations and our groups, we hear victims saying the same thing. They are really looking for services to help them and information to support them in the process, particularly when they are dealing with the compensation scheme or other programs.

We reject the fact that Bill C-4 has been proposed without any real consultation being undertaken with a broad range of people, victims themselves and organizations that have been involved with them for at least three decades and have taken up their cause everywhere in Canada.

The present government still has a lot to do, to give effect to victims' rights, to guarantee them more participation in the criminal justice system and access to services.

Even more effort has to be made in the youth network, particularly to develop a pro-victim culture among all actors in that network. Victims of an offender who is a minor are still being neglected. By trying to toughen sentences for some categories of offenders, the reassuring message is supposed to be that victims are being taken care of and what becomes of them is a matter of concern, but in reality neither the root problems nor the solutions are being tackled. It is a way of salving their conscience.

Initiatives for victims and offenders must be based on a long-term vision and must not be developed for political gain. It is easier to amend legislation than to fund services.

The Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes submits that measures to help parents and families reduce poverty and inequality are essential to combat and reduce criminal victimization. We can restore confidence on the part of victims and the public in general by other means, by other solutions, than enforcement.

Thank you for your attention.

[Michèle Goyette]

Okay, I'll continue.

We have about 13,000 employees, nearly 900 of whom specialize directly in working with young offenders. Note also that the Directors of Youth Protection who are in charge of the youth centres are also provincial directors under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. This means that we are very interested in the decisions that will be made in this Parliament, because working with young offenders is our stock in trade and our day-to-day work.

Before talking about Bill C-4 itself, we would like to point out that we were expecting a real revision of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in 2008, as promised, with real consultation with organizations that work with young offenders. That broad and open consultation did not take place, and we hope that it will be done seriously, with intensive involvement by the groups that work with young offenders everyday, as well as in research, and by organizations that advocate on behalf of victims.

That being said, we have read the changes proposed by Bill C-4 and we have several major objections, which I would like to explain.

The first objection relates to clause 3 of the bill, which amends section 3 of the Act. We believe that the change proposed in clause 3, placing the principle of the proportionality of the sentence above everything else, including prevention, rehabilitation and reintegrating the offender, amounts to going 100 years backwards in terms of legislation about young offenders. Whether it be the victim of the offence or society as a whole, everyone benefits if the offender makes a positive change in their behaviour. Some mathematical formula for proportionality is not going to do that, what will do that is intervention strategies tailored to each young person, of course based on aspects of the offence, but also on the unique characteristics of each young person.

On that point, the Quebec model for intervention advocates a differential approach, the right measure at the right time. That model has stood the test when it comes to results, since the youth crime rate is lower in Quebec than in most other Canadian provinces.

The other clause that raises problems for us is clause 7 of the bill, where denunciation and deterrence are added to the decision-making criteria. Every study that has been done to date shows that these strategies do not work to prevent youth crime; the contrary is true. These are principles imported from the adult criminal system, that do not take into account the unique characteristics of adolescents.

What are those unique characteristics? Young people's maturity level is different from adults'. That means two things. First, what stops them before they commit a crime, and what stops them afterward, is different. Second, in the case of young offenders, the right measure at the right time means that the situation will be examined by competent people who are capable of understanding the unique situation of each young person. This is not a mathematical formula, it is a matter of doing a psychosocial and criminological assessment of the young person. Measures relating to young people must also involve the parents and demonstrate concern for the victims. Those are the principles that we stress in the Quebec model.

The other clause that raises major problems, in our opinion, is clause 20 of the bill, which amends section 75 of the Youth Criminal Justice Act to allow the judge to lift the ban on publication of the name of a young offender who is found guilty of a violent offence. In our opinion, that does not help anyone, because it seriously limits the possibility of reintegrating a young offender into society.

What is the advantage in ostracizing a young person, depriving them of the opportunity to take positive control of their lives through work or education? Is this not a way of reducing their options and keeping them on the road to crime, and thus creating new victims?

The Association des centres jeunesse and the provincial directors are sensitive and empathetic toward victims, and say that the government is on the wrong track when it claims that society will be better protected by implementing more coercive measures.

The present act already allows for these situations to be dealt with and public safety to be protected. In fact, the situation of Sébastien, to which the bill refers, clearly illustrates what is possible under the act, since the young offender in question in that offence has already been sentenced as an adult, on the recommendation of the provincial director to the Youth Division of the Court of Québec. Today, the young person who murdered Sébastien is serving his sentence in an adult prison.

This example clearly illustrates that the legislative tool for protecting society is already available and the people responsible for administering the act take their responsibilities seriously and protect society.

To summarize, we are very concerned about the long-term effects of the proposed changes. The loss of the protection of young people's identity, exemplary sentences based on denunciation and deterrence and proportional to the offence above all else, are the opposite of what we have constructed as the model for dealing with youth crime.

That model is in fact the envy of many countries, who come to visit our facilities, or who invite us to train their personnel. It has also proved itself through its success in terms of preventing youth crime and rehabilitating offenders and thus effectively protecting society.

Instead of finishing the job of dismantling a model that works, why would the government not invest more in concrete measures to reduce poverty and social misery, particularly among aboriginal people, and to promote access to education, employment and housing, instead of pursuing this get-tough, enforcement approach, which in our opinion leads nowhere?

Thank you for your attention.

[Michèle Goyette, Director, Special services and Services to Young Offenders, Centre jeunesse de Montréal - Institut universitaire, Association des centres jeunesse du Québec]

Good morning. I would first like to thank the committee for inviting our association to come and present our views on Bill C-4.

My name is Michèle Goyette. I am a criminologist. I have worked in the youth offenders network in Quebec for over 30 years. I am currently the Director of services to young offenders at the Centre de Jeunesse de Montréal. I am a member of the board of directors of the Société de criminologie du Québec and of the Quebec section of the Child Welfare League of Canada. I am here today to represent the Association des centres jeunesse du Québec, to convey our position on Bill C-4.

The Association des centres jeunesse du Québec is an organization of 16 youth centres in the 16 administrative regions of Quebec. Each of the centres offers services for children, youth and their parents, under the Youth Protection Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and the provisions of the Civil Code relating to adoption.

There seems to be a problem with the translation.

[Dr. Tim Croisdale, Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Fast and honourable members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Tim Croisdale. I'm an assistant professor at California State University in Sacramento. I'm also adjunct professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. Also, I'm senior scholar and international visiting professor at the Institute of Canadian Urban Research Studies, also at Simon Fraser University.

I am here today to speak about research related to Bill C-4, which seeks to address concerns about dangerous violent young offenders and young offenders with patterns of repeated offending. My statement will provide an overview of the research on persistent offending and report findings of research on persistent offending and violent offending I have been involved with as they relate to Bill C-4.

Persistent offending is commonly defined as repeated offending. It is not, however, simply more offending, but should also be considered and examined as an individual's failure to stop offending. Persistence also means, then, failed responses to offending that may lead to violent offending.

Persistent offender research is conducted within the topic of criminal career research and includes the areas of onset, frequency, seriousness, and duration.

Onset refers to the age at one's first offence, often measured by arrest. Ages for youth onset are the teen years, from 13 to 17 years. Early onset occurs at 13 or 14 years of age.

Research findings revealed two findings regarding onset. First, the earlier the onset age, the more frequently an offender will offend. Second, the earlier the onset age, the longer the offender will continue to offend. Early onset, therefore, is a good predictor of future offending. Research indicates that persistent offenders begin offending early in life. That is, they have early onset.

Frequency of offending refers to the amount of offending by individuals and is most commonly measured by number of arrests. For youth, as age increases through the teen years, so does the amount of offending, producing an increasing trajectory from the early onset ages through the late teen years.

Examination of the number of arrests of youth, by age, reveals an age-crime curve that illustrates that the number of arrests are initially lower in the early teens, increasing through the mid-teen years, peaking at ages 18 and 19 years, before beginning a decline in the early twenties and continually declining throughout the twenties. Persistent offenders not only begin offending early in life, they continue offending at higher rates through their teens and twenties than other offenders.

While persistent offenders are numerically a smaller group than other offenders, they account for a disproportionately large amount of crime. An analysis I conducted on arrest data in British Columbia found that between July 2001 and June 2006, a small group, 9.2% of all offenders, accounted for 36.2%, or over one-third, of all arrest charges in the province.

When considering persistent offenders, we should not only refer to seriousness as the severity of the crime, but also we should discuss seriousness in terms of the total amount of harm caused by numerous repeated offences.

While most often engaging in non-violent offences, persistent offenders are a drain on criminal justice system resources. When one considers the vast amount of resources that are necessary to respond to persistent offending, even persistent nuisance offending increases in seriousness.

Persistent youth offenders do not specialize in one type of crime over time. However, for persistent offenders, offending leads to more offending and in some cases it leads to violent offending.

Desistance is considered to be the end of the criminal career, the cessation of offending. Career length for offending is often calculated by the duration between onset and last arrest. True desistance, however, cannot be determined until an offender can no longer engage in crime. Persistent offenders not only begin offending earlier and offend more often than other offenders, they also offend for a longer duration. That is, they have longer criminal careers.

My own research has focused on persistent offenders, the existence of persistent co-offending, and patterns of persistent co-offending networks.

Two studies I have conducted in California analyzed long-term offending. Examining offending over long terms, 14 years in one study and 18 years in the other, greatly increases significance of findings as short-term variations in offending patterns are reduced. Both studies also followed large populations of youth offenders, further increasing the significance of the findings.

Research on persistent offenders and co-offending networks I have conducted in British Columbia examined offending over four years and included an examination of over nine million records of data. Some important findings from my research on persistent offending are as follows: youth had an average of 10 arrest charges before admission to a correctional institution; the age-crime peak of persistence is 16 to 17 years, two years earlier than crime normally peaks for youth offenders in general; the average age at first incarceration into a youth correctional institution was 17; a small percentage of youth persistent offenders is responsible for a larger percentage of crime; persistent offenders have been found to co-offend in co-offending criminal networks; persistent offenders with 10 or more arrest charges are less likely to actually be charged than offenders with single arrest charges.

Why are persistent offenders different from other offenders?

Most offenders cease offending after their first encounter with the criminal justice system. With additional encounters, more offenders cease to re-offend. In fact, most first-time juvenile arrestees are not arrested again, and the majority of those arrested twice are not arrested a third time.

Persistent offenders are resilient, in that they resist informal interventions and formal sanctions at all levels, even as they increase in severity. Persistence is fundamentally a measure of an offender's resistance to intervention, to rehabilitative efforts, and in some cases to punishment. Repeated arrests, then, equal repeated failures to desist offending. As such, in an examination of persistence, arrests no longer can be considered as simply arrests but as active interventions attempted yet resisted by the offender.

While many persistent offenders offend non-violently, some begin to commit more serious crimes and violent crimes. Increasing offence severity is another indication that prior interventions have failed and been resisted. Persistent offenders start early, offend often, and offend longer, leading to a high likelihood to offend throughout their lifespan. Persistence is a precursor to later offending. Measures must be in place to protect the public from the worst persistent offenders and violent offenders.

What should we expect, then, from youth who persist to offend? We should expect to see long and active criminal careers. It is true that they account for more offending and offend for a longer time than other offenders. It is true that they offend at a higher rate into adulthood than other offenders.

For example, for the youth persistent offenders in our study, following release from incarceration and discharge from the subsequent parole the number of arrest charges peaked again at age 21. Further, our study in California found that arrest rates for persistent offenders aged 21 to 24 were eight times higher than the national average arrest rate for the same age group.

Persistent offenders, however, do not continue to offend at a high rate throughout adulthood. Persistent offenders' number of offences do gradually decline with age, although they still offend at a higher rate than do other offenders.

The facts surrounding persistent offenders tempts the conclusion that criminal justice sanctions are ineffective. However, studies have found crime reduction effects of sanctions.

Our study found that during post-release parole arrests remained relatively low, suggesting that supervision under the criminal justice system reduces criminal behaviour. And even with the post-release spike at age 21 in arrests, criminal behaviour was lower after youth incarceration than it was before.

For those persistent offenders in our study who subsequently were incarcerated in adult correctional facilities, arrest rates declined with age after release from those facilities. The re-arrest rates of those incarcerated again as adults were about half the level prior to that incarceration.

How does Bill C-4 help? Society needs protection from persistent and violent young offenders. Bill C-4 proposes amendments to certain provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, welcomed by Canadians, based on the experiences of victims of persistent and violent young offenders. The amendments are also consistent with research on persistent and violent young offenders, and as such offer the criminal justice system an evidence-based and appropriate response to these types of offenders.

There are a small number of dangerous offenders and re-offenders causing a disproportionate amount of crime and harm in Canada. In conclusion, I offer my belief that the amendments to the clauses of the YCJA target that small number of dangerous and repeat offenders from which Canadians should be protected.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call the meeting to order. This is meeting number 17 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. For the record, today is Thursday, May 13, 2010.

You have before you the agenda for today. Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, May 3, 2010, we're continuing with our review of Bill C-4, Sebastien's law, which is an act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

To help us with our review, we have a number of witnesses. First, we have Dr. Tim Croisdale, assistant professor at California State University. We also have Arlène Gaudreault, president of Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes. I hope I got that right. Representing the Association des centres de jeunesse du Québec, we have Madame Goyette, the director.

Welcome here.

I think you've been told that each of you has ten minutes to present and then we'll open the floor to questions.

Anybody here who doesn't know the rule, if you have a cellphone, please turn it to vibrate or shut it off completely, so we don't have any disturbances.

Dr. Croisdale, if you'd like to start, you have ten minutes.