National Post, Global TV network, various Canwest newspapers, CanWest News
Service, Meagan Fitzpatrick, Wednesday, September 20, 2006
OTTAWA - For the second year in a row, the number of youths aged 12 to 17 behind
bars or on probation has gone down, according to an analysis from Statistics
Canada.
The report suggests that the implementation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in
2003 is having an effect in driving the numbers down.
In 2004 to 2005, an average of 1,300 young people in sentenced custody on any
given day, down about 16 per cent from 2003 to 2004 and down 50 per cent since
the YCJA went into effect. About 700 of these individuals were in secure
custody, down 14 per cent, while 600 were in open custody, a 20 per cent drop.
The Yukon and Nunavut were the only parts of the country where the average
number of youth in sentenced custody went up, all other jurisdictions saw a
decline.
The average number of youth on probation is also on its way down, seeing a drop
of almost 25 per cent in 2004 to 2005 from the previous year to 21,200 people.
Compared to the 2002 to 2003 figures - before the YCJA was implemented - the
number has dropped by almost one-third.
The incarceration rate in 2004 to 2005 slid 12 per cent from the previous year
and was at 8.3 per 10,000 youth.
The YCJA introduced a number of new community sentences, including a deferred
custody and supervision order and a community portion of a custody and
supervision order. Those provisions allow for a young person to serve a custody
sentence in the community under a number of strict conditions and is comparable
to a conditional sentence for adults. Last year, about 450 young people on
average were on deferred custody and supervision, up 87 per cent from the
previous year.
One of the objectives of the YCJA is to deal with less serious cases Read More ..
effectively outside of the court process. The Act also requires judges to
inquire whether an adult is available to take care of a young person awaiting
trial instead of the youth waiting in detention. Statistics Canada says the
number of young people held on remand while awaiting trial or sentencing
declined five per cent to about 800 on any given day last year.
By Kathleen Parker, The Orlando Sentinel, USA, on July 18, 1999
Now is the time for all good fathers to come to the aid of the family.
But you'd better hurry; your days are numbered. In fact, if you happen to be a heterosexual male (further doomed by Caucasian pigmentation), your days are already over, according to a cover article in the June issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association.
In their article, "Deconstructing the Essential Father," researchers Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach challenge one of the core institutions of our culture -- fatherhood. Read More .. less, fathers, as we've known and loved them, are obsolete.
The article makes numerous breathtaking assertions, but basically the researchers state that fathers aren't essential to the well-being of children
Read More ...
Children are heavily impacted by parental imprisonment and greater
attention should be given to their rights, needs and welfare in criminal
justice policy and practice. Due to a variety of reasons such as mothers
often being the primary or sole carer of children, complicated care
arrangements, the likelihood of women prisoners being greater distances
from home and a host of factors explored in detail in other QUNO
publications, maternal imprisonment can be more damaging for children
than paternal imprisonment. However, it is important not to
underestimate the damage that paternal imprisonment can have on
children.
Children with incarcerated fathers experience many of the same problems
as those with incarcerated mothers, including coping with loss,
environmental disruption, poverty, stigmatisation, health problems and
all of the difficulties involved in visiting a parent in prison. It
appears that there are also some difficulties specifically associated
with paternal imprisonment, such as a higher risk of juvenile
delinquency and strained relationships between the mother and child.
The numbers of children separated from their fathers due to imprisonment
is far higher than those separated from their mothers due to the vast
majority of prisoners being men (globally over 90 per cent of prisoners
are male. To ignore this group would, therefore, be to neglect the vast
majority of children affected by parental imprisonment.
Read More ..
It's widely recognized that boys benefit from having dads around as role models and teachers about manhood.
But does having a father at home make much difference for girls?
But even in affluent families, girls become sexually active and pregnant earlier if they don't live with fathers,
according to the largest and longest-term study on the problem. It was released in May.
Compared with daughters from two-parent homes, a girl is about five times
more likely to have had sex by age 16 if her dad left before she was 6 and twice as likely if she stops living with
her dad at 6 or older.
The study of 762 girls for 13 years took into account many factors that could lead to early sex, says Duke
University psychologist Kenneth Dodge, the study's co-author. Still, there was an independent link between teenage
sex and girls not living with their biological fathers.
Divorced fathers are Read More ..volved in their children's lives than
conventional wisdom would have it, a new study shows.
It shows surprisingly varied and flexible care patterns among
separated families, with "every other Saturday" contact giving way to
Read More ..ild-focused arrangements.
Australian Institute of Family Studies research fellow Bruce Smyth
has produced the first detailed snapshot of parent-child contact after
divorce anywhere in the world. Published today in the institute's
journal Family Matters, the analysis has implications for children's
emotional and financial wellbeing.
Other research indicates children of separated families do best when
they have multifaceted relationships, including sleepovers, sharing
meals and doing schoolwork, with both parents.
Researchers say they found a direct relationship between children's behavioural problems and the
amount of contact they had with their natural father.
The effect was more pronounced in single-parent families, particularly where the mother was a
teenager. In such cases, children were especially vulnerable emotionally if they had no contact with their father.
When 50 percent of marriages end in divorce and 43 percent of children are left with one parent, everyone is
affected: uncles, aunts, grandparents, and friends, but mostly, the children. The devastation from our divorce
practices is our most public secret scandal. Everyone whispers it, the whispers never acknowledged. It seems that
as long as a villain can be created, society is content.
After three decades of research universally pointing to more productive options, why does Custody-Access-Support
remain?
