CANADA VIEWPOINT
Young suspects in serious crimes shouldn't have right to anonymity
I don't know the names of the 17-year-old boy and his 15-year-old girlfriend who are jointly accused in the murder of Stefanie Rengel, the 14-year-old girl stabbed to death on New Year's Day and dumped in a snowbank outside her Toronto home.
Nor can I name the four teens accused of killing a cat in a microwave during an alleged house robbery in Camrose, Alta.
On different levels, but for obvious reasons, the crimes have attracted national attention. But to identify the accused in either case is against the law -- specifically, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which bans publication of the names of suspects under 18.
The names have been published, however, on the social networking site Facebook. Every teen in Toronto who cares to can discover who Rengel's alleged killers are -- and a good deal more than just their identities. The names of the alleged cat-torturers have also been posted on the Web, accompanied by expressions of horror at the cruelty of the alleged act.
This astonishing phenomenon of instant, electronic communication among teenagers is changing our world. The police know it. In the wake of major crimes involving youth, investigators go directly to sites like Facebook looking for clues. They're gaining a front-row seat into what would otherwise be a closed world. The irony is that the cops are also demanding offending Internet messages be censored to conform with the law.
I'd argue that the law is fatally flawed, and that the new technologies are merely making it irrelevant. Conscience-stricken liberals claim the purpose of the law is to prevent young suspects from being "stigmatized." What nonsense.
Arthur Schafer, director of the "centre of professional and applied ethics" at the University of Manitoba, was even quoted as saying that "publishing the names [of the alleged cat-killers] . . . is as worrying for society as the original act." I beg to disagree.
What the law really does is provide a convenient cloak of anonymity to hide the smirking faces of kids who have learned they have nothing to fear from our toothless justice system. Isn't it time we stopped fretting about the supposedly fragile egos of teenage thugs? Why shield them from the public humiliation that might cause them to think twice? Their parents remain nameless, too -- but not blameless. Why should they, or their obnoxious offspring, be spared ignominy? The debate on youth crime needs injecting with a healthy dose of reality.
Even if Rengel's alleged killers are convicted and sentenced as adults, the girl would serve a maximum of only seven years before parole, the youth 10. And their identities would remain officially unknown.
Would it not act as a deterrent if kids knew they'd be identified, even as suspects? At the very least we should name the guilty, regardless of age.
It may be the only real punishment they get.
Alan Ferguson
8 January 2008
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/editorial/story.html?id=409b515a-8d37-4da6-8f98-039c33ee0e3f