Hey to all the fellow bloggers out there! I am your official youth crime reporter from Edmonton, AB. I had my first appearance in room 444 today, as an observer, not an offender. In case you're wondering, room 444 is the youth court found in the downtown core of Alberta's capital. It was quite an interesting experience to say the least. I was not sure what to expect, as I have never been to any form of court before.
The people I saw were very stereotypical under the social definition of 'criminals'. The majority of the offenders were members of minority groups; the boys were dressed in baggy clothes, with jeans below their bottoms and big, dark sweatshirts and baseball caps with hoods up. The girls were dressed in revealing, tight clothing. Most of their parents were not present, and if so, they looked as troubled as their children. What I mean by this is a stereotypical view in itself. I only knew for sure of one women being a girls mother, but she was poorly dressed as well, wearing a beer logo t-shirt and ripped jeans. I'm not exactly sure what this really says, but it does make me wonder if that was the best outfit choice for your daughters hearing, and if its even appropriate outside the courtroom. It is the way they dressed and looked that led me to the conclusion that perhaps the 1st and 3rd wave of Modernist/Positivist approaches to juvenile deviance were accurate. It seems as though environment has a lot to do with youth behavior. It was clear that these young soon to be adults did not come from wealthy involved families. The reason for their actions were easily explained by their unstable environments, for example, a young girl was caught shoplifting, and it was mentioned that she had gotten kicked out of her mother's home and was just settling in with her grandmother.
I wasn't sure what to expect in the sense of the crimes, and punishments. I had no idea what young persons went to court for, and what they received as punishment. I witnessed the case of a 16-year-old non-Caucasian grade 12 student who resides with his grandparents. He was arrested and in court for several reasons. He plead not guilty to a break and entering charge that caused damage and was scheduled a trial date in December. He was charged with mischief, and pleads guilty. Lastly, he was arrested for attempting to dine and dash at a restaurant. The judge gave him a probation period of 6 months, where he would have to: pay the fines, do community service hours, attend school on a regular basis, report to his probation officer, appear in court when required, pay the amount due at the attempted dine and dash restaurant and write a letter of apology to the owner of that restaurant. My question is, what led him to commit these crimes, and was it worth it? Perhaps there is still a hedonistic aspect in crime today. He may have been driven by the pleasure seeking principle, and just didn't care about the punishment of the crime. Just based on the little interaction I had with the situation, I would probably guess that boredom, an unstable environment and peer pressure (he was with another boy while dining and dashing) were all causes of his crime(s). I strongly feel peer pressure was a large aspect of his dining and dashing crime. The crown even mentioned how he had tried to pay with a gift certificate, but it was deemed a fake so his friend just started to run out the door, so he followed suit. The fact that he doesn't live with his parents shows that they either were not fit parents, or they were unable to handle their son.
Unfortunately, that is all that can be said about this particularly day, until next time! Your YCR is signing off!
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