Good government policy should not be based on crisis events — including a grisly murder — says a University of Victoria criminologist.
“Policy has to be done on the basis of evidence, not on emotion,” said Jim Hackler, who said he is not convinced that proposals made by the family of murdered Langford teen Kimberly Proctor on Thursday would improve the youth justice system.
“Juvenile violent crimes is steadily going down; murder by juveniles is going down,” he said.
The Proctor family is seeking provincial and federal changes in the wake of the death of Kimberly, who was killed by two schoolmates aged 16 and 17 in 2010.
The family is advocating for automatic steps involving youth charged with murder, including moving youth 16 and older who have been charged with murder to adult court, making their names public upon a guilty finding, and setting parole eligibility at 25 years instead of 10.
They have also called for mandatory identification and counselling of youth who behave in threatening ways.
But such policies have failed in the past, Hackler said. “There’s no reason why it shouldn’t fail here.”
Hackler said that experienced youth court judges and prosecutors are better equipped to deal with serious offences by teenagers in B.C. and it would not be a good idea to lose that expertise by automatically sending murder charges to adult court.
A youth sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 10 years is not automatically going to get out of prison after 10 years, stressed Stephen Fudge, president of the B.C. Crown Counsel Association.
Many of the things the Proctors are advocating for are already available in the current system, he added. “It’s just not mandatory. There is seldom a ‘;one size fits all’ solution. Young people and crimes come in all different sizes.”
The Supreme Court of Canada has come down on the side of not having mandatory adult sentencing, he noted. It struck down a provision of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in 2008 that put the onus on teens to show why they should not be treated as adults. Doing so was unconstitutional, because it would negate “the presumption of diminished moral blameworthiness based on age.”
There are also provisions for those as young as 14 to be sentenced as adults, though it doesn’t happen automatically, Fudge said.
“It’s always up to the Crown to show why a young person should be sentenced as an adult.” The same holds true for publication of young offenders’ name.
Julie Di Mambro, press secretary to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, noted that Ottawa passed the Federal Safe Streets and Communities Act last year with a view to making protection of the public a primary goal of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
It requires that prosecutors at least consider seeking adult sentences for youth convicted of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and aggravated assault and inform the court if they chose not to apply for such a sentence.
