Published by Senator Grant Mitchell on 12 November 2008
During the recent federalelection, the Prime Minister suddenly announced that under a Conservative government,legislation would be tabled allowing 14 year old children to be imprisoned forlife. Like myself, many Canadianscouldn’t understand exactly how a policy of jailing children would make ourgreat country safer. We will surely be debating this legislation in the Senate, but I thought I would share some of my thoughts on it now.
Are there anystatistics on what miniscule portion of the crime in our country is perpetratedby 14 year old children?
How would a child volatileenough to take another’s life possibly be mature or competent enough to beaware of the life sentence for doing so, or, if he or she were aware, beconcerned about that sentence?
Thegovernment increased the age of consent for sex from 14 to 16 under theassumption that 14 year old children are insufficiently mature to assess theconsequences of that kind of decision.Now this new legislation would reduce the age at which a childcan be treated as an adult in the court system. It is a direct extrapolation that if a child of 14 is mature enough tobe treated as an adult in justice system, then when does the government startallowing them to drive cars, drink alcohol, join the army, and vote? This may explain the debate around Omar Khadr, who I consider a child soldier.
Under this legislation, what will happen to a young person sentenced to a prison full of hardened, adultcriminals? I’ve heard prison oncereferred to as “crime school” for younger inmates – imagine being “raised” inthis system.
Being "tough on crime" is a limited view.
Imagine a crime policythat says: “We're going to get tough on crime by getting tough on the causes ofcrime”. Imagine how little crime wewould actually have, how few people there would be in jail if we could onlyfocus on:
Ending child sexual abuse;
Stop using jails as mentalhealth facilities;
Overcoming poverty;
Eliminating fetal alcoholsyndrome;
Stopping racism;
Treating addiction as thedisease that it is; and
Eliminating violence againstwomen.
I'll bet that if we coulddo all of those things, we would probably have about 80% fewer people in prisonthan we do now. And, we would be a much more compassionate and safer society.But these are not simple solutions to a complex problem.
We have to ask ourselveswhat kind of nation would we be to consider solving difficult social problemsby treating children this manner. Butwe are a compassionate nation that believes in social policy that is the rightthing to do, rather than what is simply easiest to do.
Thislock-them-up-throw-away-the-key mentality simply breeds morecriminal behavior rather than it serves to eliminate.