Evidence of meeting #17 for Justice and Human Rights in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was youth.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Yes. When the documents are available in electronic form, could they be sent to us in that form too? That way we will be able to consult them at any time.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Brian Murphy
That is a question of copyright that will be settled between the clerk and the professor. The clerk will receive the documents and the analyst's opinion.
You understand what we're saying here. Great.
We'll go to Mr. Norlock, for five minutes.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to the witnesses for appearing today. I have just a few quick items, if possible.
Mr. Croisdale, I always ask questions under the assumption that the people at home are listening. In this case, they would read it.
Would I be correct in saying that your studies were done in a dispassionate way--in other words, you looked at the numbers, as opposed to injecting your philosophical view on the criminal justice system, or for that matter, the youth part of the criminal justice system?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes, that's very accurate. It's all unbiased, academic-type research. It's not biased one way or the other.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
So you don't belong to any political party or subscribe to any type of--
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
I don't.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Okay, thank you.
I'm wondering if your studies indicated the other side of the equation. We're dealing specifically with the repeat prolific offender, that 5% to 10% of the youth who commit series crime. In the studies you have looked at, the overview, did you come away with any feeling as to the other end of the spectrum--in other words, how the community feels or community perceptions?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
No, I did not. This was an analysis of lots of data. We didn't make assumptions on how victims were involved or community effects.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Okay, so the statistical data that you provided us is predominantly from British Columbia.
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes, the numbers examining prolific offenders, how they generally co-offend in networks, are from British Columbia. Two major studies on youth prolific offenders were both done in California.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Do the numbers for California appear to be similar to those in British Columbia?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes. Even though they're for youth versus general offending, they're consistent, and they're consistent with all the research through history that's been done on prolific offending.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
So would I be correct in saying that your studies indicate that the numbers for that particular portion, youth prolific offenders, even though we're in two different countries—because the perception is that in the United States people are much more prone to crime than in Canada—are quite similar numerically?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes, I think they're similar.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Of course, you are an academic, and you do try to be specific to your studies, but would it be a stretch to therefore imagine or to therefore extrapolate that your numbers, since they're correct in two jurisdictions—although they happen to be on the Pacific coast—would probably be the same or similar to those in the rest of Canada?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
I would expect that to be true in Canada and anywhere you did studies on prolific offenders. The findings are that consistent.
Conservative
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...?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes. I think it focuses and allows for more sanctions for those who have persisted despite everything at a lower level.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
So the sanctions would indicate that they need more institutional... Because we're talking about incarceration.
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes, they would need more institutional supervision. In Canada, with a full awareness, there is treatment. That's in contrast to the situation in the United States, in which there has been effective incarceration of persistent offenders with a very limited amount of treatment, if any at all, in comparison with what one could hope for in Canada.
Conservative
Liberal
Brian Murphy Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you.
My questions are for Professor Croisdale. You got your PhD from Simon Fraser in 2008, I read. What was that in? What was your thesis? What did you write on?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
The PhD was in 2007, and the dissertation was the second study I did on persistent young offenders in California.
Liberal
Brian Murphy Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
I guess you do hold yourself out also as someone who muses on issues of modelling crime analysis in complex systems, applied data analysis, metadata computational criminology, geo-spatial crime analysis, offender mobility and crime pattern routes, and routes to crime. To me, those are all fairly technical academic terms. They seem to be focused on more than just persistent youth repeat offenders.
Has what you're testifying on here today been the crux of your work since you joined the faculty in 2008 and since you got your PhD in 2007?
Assistant Professor, California State University, As an Individual
Yes, it has. Those other terms you read there--computational criminology, all that other stuff, modelling new systems, computer systems, and stuff like that--describe means to analyze huge amounts of data in the various data sets that have to be merged and manipulated so you can analyze them. The topic that I have applied all of those methods to is prolific offending, and now networks.
