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:
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.
Hi Lakeisha,
ReplyDeleteI like the dataset you used and I think the news article you linked to put the issue in perspective is excellent in helping to offer an explanation as to why youth custodial sentences are decreasing so significantly in Canada. The only (very minor) suggestion I have for improvement is to change the way your data is organized in your "slice" so that it reads in chronological order from top to bottom. Maybe it's just me, but at first glance it appears that more youth are incarcerated in 2018/19 than 2014/15 when the opposite is true.
Hi Lakeisha,
ReplyDeleteGood work! I found the context added by your supplementary article really interesting. I think it will add a lot of colour to your data.
The only thing I might suggest would be to either use a more readily recognizable term in your lead in place of "custodial sentences" (since it sounds a bit to me like insider jargon) or to clarify it with a small explanation.
Great Job Lakeisha! I loved the way you formatted your data update. The only thing I would recommend is making your lead stronger. It's great that the crime has reduced by half but it would help if you put it in context so that readers would understand "half of what," and how much that is/its relevance. Nice links though! They all seem to work.
ReplyDeleteHi Lakeisha,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this. It's concise and to the point. If I had to nitpick, it would have looked nicer with hyperlinks. I think the lead is nice and explains enough to the reader. I also really appreciate your statement as it's to the point and explains to me exactly what I'm to expect. (Evidence backing it up.)