The Jettisoning of Juvenile Justice?

As we close this year, we await the report to Parliament by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, regarding Bill C-3, the proposed new juvenile justice legislation, the Youth Criminal Justice Act. CAEFS presented to the Committee in February 2000. While there are some significant positive improvements in the new legislation, CAEFS is extremely concerned about the lack of resources for the implementation of same. Unless community based services are encouraged with the enhancement of resources, the progressive elements of the legislation run the risk of being scuttled in the same manner as were those of the Young Offenders Act.

In addition, the increasing numbers of younger women in the provincial and federal prison systems are of particular concern to CAEFS. Unfortunately, unless the Minister resists the calls for more punitive and regressive scapegoating of Canadian youth, and, instead, embarks upon a public education campaign to inform Canadians about the excessive penalizing and incarcerating of youth in Canada, we are not likely to see much change in the current slide away from justice for young people.

In an effort to encourage the Parliamentary Standing Committee to seriously examine the disastrous impact and untold human costs of jettisoning more young people into the adult system, CAEFS facilitated a presentation by a young woman who had first hand experience in and with the system. A summary of her story follows:

A Young Woman’s Nightmare: K’s Story

K. is a young Aboriginal woman from Manitoba -- the province that has the highest rate of transferring young people from the juvenile into the adult system. K was arrested when she was 16 years old. She was driving in a car from which a young man shot another youth. She was taken into custody and immediately sent to the Portage Jail, a provincial jail for women. As a result of her age, as well as the high profile nature of her case in the province, K was segregated in one of the worst segregation units in the country for almost the entire time that she was remanded in custody awaiting her transfer hearing.