Policing Youth in Canada

Abstract Youth policing involves the ways in which police engage with youth in a society, including both proactive and reactive responses to youth in conflict with the law. To understand these responses, a social and historical context is necessary. Societal conceptualizations of childhood and youth are greatly shaped by wider social norms and ideas regarding childhood and youth identity, culpability, maturity, et cetera. Historically, notions of childhood were greatly influenced by the “child saving” movements of the late 19th and early 20th century in Canada and the United States. This paradigm of welfare-based responses to youth delinquency, with a consideration of social and environmental circumstances influencing youth transgressions, was instilled in Canada’s Juvenile Delinquents Act (1908–1984). As elsewhere in the world, the 1970s saw a shift from welfare‑based responses to youth delinquency toward a punitive focus on “young offenders” and their crimes. This change culminated in the 1984 Young Offenders Act, which many critics say resulted in the “overpolicing” of youth and, by the early 1990s, made Canada the world leader in youth incarceration—albeit through brief, “short–sharp–shock” sentences. Reformers—including the John Howard Society, the Elizabeth Fry Society, sympathetic politicians, and others within the criminal‑justice system—challenged this reality and pushed for new legislation to mitigate the effects of the overpolicing of young people in conflict with the law.Implemented in 2003, the current Youth Criminal Justice Act directs policing to consider alternatives, where appropriate, to pressing charges, diverting youth away from contact with the formal criminal justice system. Criminologists observing the impact of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in the years following its implementation have unanimously agreed that it greatly helped decrease rates of youth charged by police and rates of incarceration, in part due to new precharge extrajudicial measures and postcharge extrajudicial sanctions; the latter with an emphasis on restorative justice programming. However, moving into the 2010s, criminologists have called greater attention to substantial systemic and racial inequalities suffused through police cultures in Canada. This has led to disproportionate stops and searches involving racialized minorities and Indigenous youth, who, especially in particular provinces and territories, have not benefited from the emphasis of the Youth Criminal Justice Act on diversion from the criminal justice system. These trends are exacerbated by wider contexts of socioeconomic precarity, amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, youth homelessness has increased since the 2010s and was greatly exacerbated during the pandemic, increasing the visibility of youth vagrancy on the streets, including illegal drug (mis)use and other behaviors, amplifying police surveillance and apprehension. These events and contexts also factor into the formation of youth gangs who themselves regularly experience “overpolicing.” The patterning of these responses by police to youth in conflict with the law, especially racialized and Indigenous youth, debases trust and confidence in police, leading to a diminished likelihood of cooperation with police (e.g., during police investigations that rely on public input). Possible directions forward for youth policing in Canada include police–public collaborative initiatives and increased resources for police training and education. Further research on youth policing in Canada is needed, given a relative lack of ongoing research to date.