Frontenac Youth Diversion Program Executive Director Daren Dougall, in Kingston, Ont.
(Photo by Harrison Smith/The Globe and Mail)
Tuesday, July 19, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
The idea behind Canada’s current strategy to fight youth crime was deceptively simple: Put teens in jail if you have to, but only if you have to.
It was supposed to strike a balance between two competing anxieties: that young people were committing heinous crimes and not being punished appropriately; and that locking up impressionable teens created criminals who would spend the rest of their lives bouncing in and out of the penal system.
“There was considerable concern around whether the balance was quite right in terms of protection of the public and rehabilitation,” says Anne McLellan, the Liberal justice minister who brought in the Youth Criminal Justice Act in the late 1990s.
a business of misfits 