Thank you. It's a privilege to be invited back here. I was here last June and I presented a brief, and I understand you have copies of that brief. Having been here before, I will say a few words by way of introduction.
I am a law professor, and I specialize in a range of issues related to families and children, including young offender issues. I've probably written more about youth justice issues than any other law professor in Canada; there are others who have written more from the point of view of other disciplines.
I agree it is an appropriate time to look at the act and make some amendments to it. However, I do not agree that there should be very substantial amendments. I think that while youth crime is understandably a serious problem, the legislation can only have a limited impact on youth crime. In fact, the youth justice system can only have a limited impact on youth crime.
Largely I think the legislation has been a success, or at least a qualified success, in that the rates of use of court and custody have gone down, as we've heard. Youth crime has not increased. We have achieved both a significant financial saving and a significant saving in terms of human resources.
I worry that the thrust of some of these amendments will be to increase the use of courts and custody, and that will increase financial costs, though I should say not to the federal government. Unlike some of the other changes in the criminal law where the federal government may pay for part of the cost of incarceration, this is totally placing the burden on the provinces. I worry about that.
Having said that, I think there are some good provisions in this act. We've heard about a number of them. Certainly there's the introduction of the concept of diminished moral accountability. In proposed subsection 29(2), I think the issue of pre-trial detention is extremely important. In fact, since I submitted that brief, we've had more recent data. You'll hear from Statistics Canada that we send more young people into pre-trial detention than we do into custody. It's a bigger issue now than the use of custody.
One of the problems with sending young people into detention is that their rehabilitation is very difficult to undertake. They're suddenly put in detention where there's limited programming. There is greater potential for abuse from other inmates, less access to programming, and higher levels of suicide and mental health problems. It's a very significant concern.
Having said that, I view proposed subsection 29(2) as somewhat narrowing; it clarifies the law in this area. Probably on balance it's an improvement over what we now have, but I would submit that subsection 29(2)—and I'm sure in your questions we can talk about it—is actually going to narrow the scope for using pre-trial detention from what it is now.
I will refer to two parts of the act where, along with my colleagues here and elsewhere, I share great concerns. One is about the introduction of deterrence and denunciation into the principles of the act. I think it's important that we have a youth justice system that deters young people from committing offences and holds them accountable—and, if you want, from the point of view of colloquial speech, “denounces crime”. But if we use the words “deterrence and denunciation” and put them in the act, the message to judges is to send more young people into custody. That will be its only effect. Unfortunately for the young people who are committing offences, the reality is they are not considering the consequences of getting caught. They are not thinking that the sentence Parliament has imposed is going to go from four months to six months for this offence.
Increasing sentences will not have any impact on their behaviour. There's a huge amount of research that shows that increasing the severity of youth sentence does not affect behaviour. On the other hand, putting those words into the act will affect judicial behaviour, in particular with increased sentences. I'm concerned about that.
On the issue of publicity...and one can understand the point of view of the public, let alone the victims, who say, “I want some accountability here. I want this young person to be held accountable, and I want to know that he or she is appropriately shamed.” Unfortunately, the reality is that if we put their names in the newspapers—there is experience with this in the United States, where they do allow publicity—the offenders go around saying “Look, I'm the toughest guy here. I'm in the newspaper.” It doesn't affect their behaviour, but it does make their rehabilitation much more difficult. It stigmatizes their siblings and their parents. It does not have the kind of positive effect on reducing youth crime that one might hope.
In other words, we have to have a sophisticated, thoughtful, research-based response to youth crime if we want to have a safer society and not do things that might intuitively but in an uninformed way be a response to youth crime that may actually lead to a society where there is an increase in youth crime.
We want to have changes in the act that are smart changes that lead to a safer society, not changes that are, if you want, dumb changes that lead to an increase in youth crime and a society that has more problems with youth crime.
I will end there. Thank you.