Volume
41, No. 1
January 1999
Trends
in youth crime in Canada 1977 - 1996
Peter J. Carrington
The
selling of innocence: The gestalt of danger in the lives of youth
prostitutes
Bernard Schissel and Kari Fedec
Recidivism
in youth court: An examination of the impact of age, gender, and prior
record
Jessica Warner, Melanie Kowalski and Tullio Caputo
Books
Reviews
PACIOCCO: Getting Away with Murder: The Canadian Criminal Justice
System
Julian Roberts
OLIVER:
Community - Oriented Policing: A Systemic Approach to Policing. ALPERT
et PIQUERO: Community Policing: Contemporary Readings. STRETCHER:
Planning Community Policing: Goal Specitif Cases and Exercises. THURMAN
et McGARRELL: Community Policing in a Rural Setting. SKOGAN et HARTNETT:
Community Policing, Chicago Style
André Normandeau
POUPART,
LALONDE et JACCOUD: De l'École de Chicago au postmodernisme.
Trois-quarts de siècle de travaux sur la méthodologie
qualitative
Jacques Hamel
COURTEMANCHE:
Pièges et déontologie en milieu carcéral
André Normandeau
KELLING
and COLES: Fixing Broken Windows
Ian Baird
ROBERTS
and STALANS: Public Opinion, Crime, and Criminal Justice
Frédéric Lemieux
DeKESEREDY
and SCHWARTZ: Woman Abuse on Campus: Results from the Canadian National
Survey
N. Zoe Hilton
Books Received
Coming
Events
Instructions
to Authors
Abstracts/Résumés
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Research notes and commentaries are usually not summarized into abstracts.
Readers who need the complete texts should contact the CCJA and subscribe
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Trends
in youth crime in Canada, 1977 - 1996
Peter J. Carrington
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
This paper
examines trends in youth crime in Canada from 1977 to 1996 using data
from the UCR Survey. Apart from a temporary peak in the early nineteen-nineties,
the level of police-reported youth crime in Canada has changed very
little since 1980. The average rate per 100,000 of police-reported
youth crime - that is, young persons apprehended by police - was 7
percent higher during 1986-96 than during 1980-83. This increase is
unlikely to be due to the Young Offenders Act (YOA). The rate of young
persons charged by police, however, was 27 percent higher during 1986-96
than during 1980-83. This increase reflects a jump in 1986 in the
proportion of apprehended youth who were charged by police - that
is, a drop in the use of police discretion. The Young Offenders Act
appears to have resulted in a change in police charging practices
in relation to apprehended youth in four provinces and one territory.
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA), these five jurisdictions
were characterized by the charging of relatively low proportions of
apprehended youth - that is, high use of police discretion; under
the Young Offenders Act, proportions of apprehended youth who were
charged in these jurisdictions increased suddenly and substantially,
reaching levels similar to those already existing in the other jurisdictions.
The relationship of these findings to the Principles of the YOA, and
to recently proposed changes in the Canadian youth justice system,
is discussed.
The
selling of innocence: The gestalt of danger in the lives of youth
prostitutes
Bernard Schissel and Kari Fedec
Department of Sociology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
In this research,
we explore the culture of violence that encompasses the lives and
well-being of youth prostitutes. Using Social Services data on four
hundred young offenders from the cities of Saskatoon and Regina, we
examine the connections between abusive childhoods, personal and educational
success and involvement in prostitution and psychological, physical
and emotional safety. Consistent with the ethno-cultural nature of
Western Canadian society, the data are analyzed and theorized within
the racial contexts of aboriginal and non-aboriginal ancestry.
Recidivism
in youth court: An examination of the impact of age, gender, and prior
record
Melanie Kowalski and Tullio Caputo
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa,
Ontario
The Young Offenders
Act (YOA) has been a source of much public debate, much of which has
focussed on sentencing patterns in youth courts. This article contributes
to the current debate over dispositions under the YOA by examining
how the youth justice system responds to repeat offenders. The data,
supplied by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics from the Youth
Court Survey, examine 47,088 youth court cases reaching disposition
in the fiscal year 1995-96. Results indicate that, amidst all the
controversy surrounding the leniency of YOA dispositions, judges do
tend to give custody dispositions more often to repeat offenders.
Severity of disposition is affected by the number of prior convictions,
gender, and seriousness of offence, while repeat offender's age did
not contribute substantially.
