The Will to Change: Lessons from Canada's Successful Decarceration of Youth

Abstract

In 1997, Canada's youth custodial facilities held 3825 sentenced youths. Eighteen years later, this number was 527—an 86 percent reduction. Overall youth imprisonment (sentenced + pretrial detention) decreased by approximately 73 percent. This paper uses Canada's successful decarceration of youths to understand what might be learned about decarceration more broadly. By examining the reforms that transpired in Canada's treatment of young offenders since the 1960s and the political/cultural shifts that occurred since the 1990s, we demonstrate that the decline resulted from changes occurring in various parts of the system. Finally, we contrast this decarceration with more than 60 years of relative stability of Canadian adult imprisonment rates as well as Canada's failure to substantially decrease youth pretrial detention in order to identify those factors seemingly necessary to reduce imprisonment more generally.

Unlikely downsizers: The prison service's role in reversing mass incarceration in Kazakhstan

“…As a turn towards greater leniency and declining incarceration rates has emerged in certain states of the United States and other Global North jurisdictions, scholarly interest has turned to explaining decarceration trends (Webster and Doob, 2007;Meyer and O'Malley, 2013;Gartner et al, 2011;Goodman et al, 2015;Webster et al, 2019). Explanations of decarceration in US states have emphasized the longer-term impact of the financial crisis of 2008.…”

Reconsidering Penal Stability in Canada Through a New Sentencing Severity Index

“…Nevertheless, changes on the legislative front in terms of sentencing policies do not necessarily produce change in criminal justice practice (Webster & Doob, 2015;Webster et al, 2019). Indeed, as noted by Doob and Webster (2006) prior to the election of Stephen Harper, judges in Canada had not shown nor indicated any desire for a more punitive approach to sentencing despite having the independence to do so through legislation in place at the time.…”

Youth carceral deinstitutionalisation and transinstitutionalisation in Ontario: Recent developments and questions

“…Rather than aspirational, this commitment to decreasing youth imprisonment became a formal requirement. Police and prosecutors were provided with alternatives to divert youth from the system, while judges were provided with a list of criteria which needed to be met in order to consider a custodial sentence, as well as a requirement to provide written justification for any sentence recommending custodial detention (Bala, Carrington & Roberts, 2009; Webster, Sprott & Doob, 2019). Yet, despite a focus on diversion, Indigenous youth continue to be hyper‐imprisoned through this system.…”

“…Regarding Ontario, there is some dated literature speaking to the long history of justice reform, including closures and transitions of youth confining institutions – from Reformatories, to Industrial Schools, to Training Schools, to Youth Detention Centers, and the rise of community‐run programmes and treatment centres in the 1970s and 1980s (Bennett, 1988; Boyd, 1981; Grant, 1984; Morrison, 1984; Neff, 1994). Regarding institutional closures, Canadian literature also speaks to prison closures (Webster & Doob, 2014; Webster, Sprott & Doob, 2019), and more recently a focus on decarceration during the Covid‐19 pandemic (Chartrand, 2021; Iftene, 2021).…”