Data Update 3

Chart

Unanswered Question

It would be interesting to find out which race/ethnicity was incarcerated the most in 2014 and compare that data to the most recent year of data available. For instance, of all the males and females ages 12-17, what percentage of them were visible minorities in the 2014 data versus the 2020 or 2021 data. Considering Canada's attempts to reconcile with its Indigenous peoples, for example, it would be interesting to see whether part of this reconciliation is finding alternate reprimands for Indigenous youth. 

How would you get the data?

Under the Access to Information Act, I would file an AOI request since the data I would need is on the national level. The kind of information I would hope to find within this dataset includes similar data to what I already have (region, age, sex, offence type, sentence type, and guilty finding), with the addition of a column for the youth's ethnic background. I wasn't sure if a youth's ethnicity is public information or not given the sensitivity of their age, so I read a bit of the Young Offender's Act, which contains information about youth rights. Nowhere in the Act did I read that the ethnicity of a charged youth is private information, so I think requesting this information would be okay. Alternatively, I could call the Access to Information and Privacy Coordinator for the Correctional Services to find out whether the information I seek is open to the public.

Data Update 2

 Lead: 

The national number of custodial sentences for male and female youth have decreased by more than half over the past five years, according to Statistics Canada data.

Excel Workbook Link and Explanation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PnmKDf9h26pANRdrxQhEQqgL6qp5SpH-/view?usp=sharing

This data slice shows the total number of custodial sentences in Canada for both males and females aged 16-17 from 2014 to 2019. By comparing the most recent year of data to the oldest year of data within this data set, it is clear that custodial sentences have decreased by more than half for both sexes. 

Original Dataset Link:

https://cutt.ly/fzoJABE

News Story/Study Link and Brief Summary: 

https://us.corwin.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/29577_03_Muncie_CYJ_Ch_02.pdf

In "Canada: Repenalization and Young Offenders' Rights" Russel Smandych analyzes the way Canadian youth is penalized for violent crime. Smandych wonders whether acts, such as the Youth Criminal Justice Act protects young peoples' rights or whether it is set up to punish, rather than heal and support. This chapter is quite lengthy and technical, and I would not use all of it in my final report. The part that interests me is the section titled, "From blaming to shaming? The restorative pretensions of the YCJA". In this section, Smandych questions "whether Canadians are punishing tougher or smarter" (Smandych, 2006). Perhaps one of the most interesting facts about this chapter is that youth custodial sentences had already decreased back in 2003. Smandych believes that if certain steps/measures are taken, the youth incarceration rate, as well as the repeat offenders rate will continue to decrease. Smandych's work is relevant to my data because perhaps Canada did, in fact, learn to punish its youth in a smarter way since the youth custodial sentences have decreased from 2014 to 2019.