OP-ED: Harsh Penalties Don’t Deter Youth from Committing Violent Crimes
OP-ED by S. Mark Pancer
Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University
Whenever there is an uptick in youth violent crime there are inevitably calls to give harsher penalties to youth for such crimes. “May be time to toughen punishments for youth involved in violent crime, says police chief” read the headline in the Kitchener City News on March 2. The chief had suggested in a recent radio interview that young people committing violent crimes be tried as adults – meaning harsher sentences for these youth – in the hope that this will deter young people from committing crimes.
The trouble with this approach is that it just doesn’t work. Indeed, an overwhelming volume of research shows that harsher penalties for young people make them more likely, rather than less likely, to commit violent crimes. Much of this research comes from our neighbours to the south. In the 1990’s, during a time of high violent crime rates among youth, many states in the US made it easier to try youth as adults. This nearly doubled the number of young people serving time in adult facilities. Subsequent research showed that these youth were significantly more, rather than less likely to commit violent crimes after their release. Not only that, but youth who served time in adult facilities were more likely to be sexually assaulted than adults in those facilities, and were five times as likely to take their own lives, compared to youth who served time in youth custody facilities. There was also clear evidence of racial bias in terms of which youth were tried as adults; more than 8 times as many Black youth were incarcerated in adult institutions than were white youth. It would be no surprise if such policies implemented in Canada resulted in even greater numbers of Black and Indigenous individuals in Canadian prisons. A recent article in the New York Times rightfully describes the policy of trying juveniles in adult courts as “horrific”.
Some have argued that while youth who have been tried in adult court may not have been deterred from committing further crimes, the possibility of facing harsher penalties may deter youth in the general population from committing crimes – a notion referred to as “general deterrence”. Again, the research evidence indicates that youth in general are not deterred from committing crimes by such policies. One study, for example, found no reduction in the number of youth committing violent crimes after the introduction of a 1978 New York State law that automatically tried young people (as young as 13 years of age!) as adults for crimes such as murder, assault and rape.
If harsh penalties don’t work, what can we do reduce violent crime, or any kind of crime, in youth? To answer this question, we must seek to understand the root causes of violent crime in young people. This is exactly what Roy McMurtry and Alvin Curling did in their 2008 report on the roots of youth violence to the Government of Ontario. According to their report, the most significant determinants of violence in youth are factors such as poverty, racism, a lack of recreational and employment opportunities, a lack of youth voice, and a justice system that does not meet young people’s needs. There are many rigorously evaluated programs that address these root causes and have proven extremely effective in reducing youth crime. Many of these programs provide young people with opportunities for engagement in recreational and cultural activities. For example, the PALS (Participate and Learn Skills) program provided increased sports, music and other recreational opportunities to youth in a low-income neighbourhood in Ottawa. During the 32 months in which the program was in operation, there was a 75% percent reduction in the number of criminal charges against youth from that neighbourhood. Other programs have addressed the needs for employment in young people. For example, the One Summer Plus program provided summer jobs as camp counsellors or community garden workers and the like to youth enrolled in 13 high-violence schools in Chicago. Results indicated that youth in this program showed a 43% decrease in arrests for violent crime when compared to a randomly assigned control group of youth who did not receive the program. These programs provide young people with skills, social connections, a sense of belonging, and a feeling of empowerment – things that go a long way towards counteracting some of the root causes of crime.
Let’s stop building more prisons, hiring more police officers to fill them, and paying more social workers to deal with the pain and anguish that crime causes for both perpetrators and victims. Instead, let’s use our resources, both financial and human, to address the root causes of crime and to give young people the opportunities they need to become thriving citizens who will contribute to their communities and to society.
Well said.
The research on this has been clear for decades and the calls we get (once in a while) to toughen laws are mostly born from a desire to look tough and capture a public sentiment for punishment that is less and less evident. It is outdated if not old fashioned and has no grounding in data or even common sense. Human behaviors does not change through threats; it never has and never will. Besides, the large majority of youth are law abiding and contributing members of our community and to stigmatize them as trouble is troublesome and lacks imagination.