CANADA
Criminologist blames law for youth crime boom
A criminologist blames the Youth Criminal Justice Act for the steady rise in young Canadians using guns to commit violent crimes. Kids who are in gangs, who are packing "heat," are not spending enough time behind bars, says University of Alberta professor Bill Pitt.
On Wednesday, a Statistics Canada report on gun crime in 2006 showed the number of young people - aged 12 to 17 - using firearms while committing violent crimes rose in three of the previous four years. Since 2002, the rate shot up 32 per cent.
Pitt said the youth justice act relies heavily on diverting juvenile delinquents from the prison system, which helps street gangs thrive. "There's a lot of problems here," he said, noting gun crimes, the drug trade and gang activity all go hand-in-hand.
In 2006, a little more than 1,200 Canadian youngsters were accused of a violent offence involving a gun. They accounted for 2.8 per cent of all youth accused of violent crimes. In contrast, just 1.8 per cent of adults accused of violent offences had used a gun. The rate for youth was mostly driven by robberies, which made up about half of all violent crimes committed with a gun.
Adults who used firearms while committing violent crimes were sentenced to, on average, more than four years in prison. Adults convicted of similar crimes who did not use firearms saw their sentences cut in half. "The high incidence of youth carrying or getting caught with weapons may be the big guys letting them carry the can," Pitt said, adding adult gang leaders could be getting their young hangers-on to hold the weapons for them because they would serve far less time in prison if caught.
The Statistics Canada report was based on information collected by police services from across the country. The records showed Alberta had some of the highest numbers of gun crimes in the country in 2006. While a province-wide firearms amnesty saw 2,500 guns turned over to the police that year, Alberta ranked third among the provinces in firearm-related homicides and robberies with guns.
Gun amnesties are "politically very good," Pitt says. "But gangsters don't give up their guns, and they're the ones that use them."
Alberta had 32 firearm-related homicides in 2006 and 352 robberies in which a gun was used. More than 1,000 people were reported victims of gun crimes.
To compare, Ontario had 66 such homicides in the same year, 1,609 gun robberies and nearly 3,500 people described as victims of firearms crimes. Across Canada, the 2006 rate of violent gun crime remained stable for a fourth straight year, but Edmonton saw a murder-related spike in 2006.
The Alberta capital was the leader in gun-related homicides in 2006, with a rate of 1.4 per cent compared to Toronto's 0.6 per cent, Vancouver's 0.7 per cent and Calgary's 0.5 per cent.
Trish Audette
20 February 2008
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=674cd06d-1cd1-4966-9d78-c66a750760e6