Toughening sentences for young offenders “makes no sense!” »

The involvement of minors in street gangs is on the rise, and the interest of these criminal organizations in these young people is no secret. The adults who run them prefer to pass on to young people tasks that could earn them many years in prison, while the sentences for minors are much less severe.

During a press briefing on the fight against criminal groups last October, Quebec Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, proposed that the penalties for certain serious crimes committed by minors be increased.

He was then reacting to the death of a 14-year-old boy, which had occurred a few weeks earlier, whose body had been discovered near a biker hangout in Frampton. The teenager, armed with an assault rifle, was affiliated with a street gang.

More and more young people are being used to do dirty work. It sickens me! I find this unacceptable, the minister then said.

The power to legislate regarding criminal procedures, however, does not lie with the provinces; it is an area of ​​federal jurisdiction. But nothing stops them from putting pressure on Ottawa to change the law.

This is what several stakeholders and researchers fear, for whom toughening sentences for minors is not the right solution.

The spiral of crime

We are people who have had a past on the street, in crime. We try to act as a mentor so that the youngest do not go through the same path as us, explains Myledy Nicolas, speaker for the Spirale project of the Pact de rue de Montréal organization.

The young woman is part of a team made up of four speakers who have had different backgrounds linked to street gangs and who base their intervention on their experiences and their knowledge of the environment.

I grew up in the Saint-Michel district. I did the youth center, petty crimes. I also had major sentences. I spent some time in Tanguay and Leclerc too, she says.

Myledy was first arrested when he was 14. Her entry into crime was not planned or organized, it happened in a fairly banal way, she says. Moreover, she does not believe that she was recruited, but rather that she simply followed childhood friends on their path to crime.

It’s as simple as, for example, we go to a youth party and my friends are fighting. There’s a chicane and I get into it and throw a chair! You don’t realize you’re already committing crime, because you’re with your group. It’s the feeling of belonging and you don’t have the maturity to understandshe explains.

Ces bad company were invoked to place her in a youth center. However, in addition to giving her notoriety in her community, these sanctions pushed her even deeper into criminality.

When I entered the youth center, I was with girls who were there to pimp. Me, I didn’t even know what “pimping” meant! But, when I left there, I said to myself: “Ah well, that’s how it works, I have to make some money and I won’t come back here!”

The rehabilitation centers of youth centers are even a place of choice for recruitment, she maintains: The guys are walking near the center. There are a lot of guys I’ve met like that, and it’s been known for a long time.

As an adult, Myledy spent time in prison for crimes related to the sex industry and for other actions that she prefers not to talk about. Her journey is proof, according to her, that detention did not distance her from the criminal world, on the contrary.

The government is in a state of panic and that’s very normal, so it just wants to find a solution, but it’s not the right one! assures the speaker.

“Like child soldiers”

It doesn’t make sense for us to say: ”We’re going to incarcerate children longer, that’s going to solve the problem!” That doesn’t hold water.deplores the professor of psychoeducation at Laval University and holder of a doctorate in social work Isabelle F.-Dufour.

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With other researchers, she met 140 people aged 16 to 35, who told them about their path to crime and their path toward social reintegration.

Why do teenagers join a street gang? This is the question we must ask ourselves, and we have realized that these young people are often in situations of polyvictimizationshe concludes.

She gives the example of a young victim of bullying who was beaten at school and who was also abused at home.

At school he was beaten. At home, he was beaten. That was his story, until a street gang offered to protect him, she says. At least, that was it for him. Someone went to his father and told him not to touch it anymore. Unfortunately, once young people join a street gang, they are asked to do increasingly risky and dangerous things and the gang in turn becomes a traumatic environment.

In the literature, children who have joined street gangs are increasingly compared to child soldiers, she adds. So, for people to come and say that we are going to be more severe with these children, that does not take into account their moral development or their capacity to consent and to know what they are getting into.

She insists: punishing offenders younger and younger does not keep them away from crime.

The younger you experience prison, the more likely you are to return there and return there quickly.

Some young adults will even get used to prison, she found in her research. And since many find themselves on the street when they leave, sometimes in the middle of winter, they say to themselves that at least in prison it is warm and they have three meals a day.

And detention is expensive. In incarceration costs, it is $106,000 per year per individual and, for a woman, $200,000. This whole process, in the end, will have cost the company three, four, five million. I wonder why citizens don’t say: ”we don’t want you to put our money there. Take the $106,000 and give it to Pact de rue for each young person this organization saves each year!”.

Let’s say we toughen the sentences, what do you think, that these young people will never get out? During this time, everything deteriorates: their social ties, their schooling. So do you think they’re going to come out and be law-abiding overnight? If we buy peace for four years to pay for 25 years because the person is no longer able to function in society, what do we gain? Who does this reassure?

Myledy Nicolas notes that young people who stay in youth centers have fatalistic views, they believe that society does not want them. And sometimes, this fatalism comes from even further.

It starts young, and the first actors in the lives of young people must be careful. Some adults, teachers, even speakers, will tell us that we are not going anywhere in life and these sentences will get into your head.

Young people must feel that they are part of society.

According to her, we must create and maintain links with these young people while offering them solutions to get them out of this spiral.

Community organizations, I didn’t even know that existed, I didn’t know that there was help, restorative justice, alternatives, she says. Well, there aren’t enough, but I think it’s more effective than putting young people with delinquents. You have to go to the bottom and not stay on top!