juvenile delinquency

And I ask you, is the system better today because of it? And I mean, I would say absolutely it's not better because of it.

I think we still have all kinds of problems with juvenile crime, despite the massive drop in other crime.

Well, repeat crime

is

the problem.

See, the thing is, you get caught sometimes, Brian, and we get caught saying that we're not being factual.

Yes, overall, juvenile crime is down.

However, the kids who are doing it over and over again, that's where we need to focus.

No, I, I mean, it just makes no sense.

I mean, again, they asked and they asked not to do this, and here we go, and we've got a juvenile crime problem that's not getting any better-

Mm-hmm

... anytime soon.

Horrible

... couple of months.

Like I, I don't know what it would take to get the attention of Annapolis when, you know, the overall crime numbers are going down, and the success that you're having, but the juvenile crime is still a major problem.

And the complaints that you hear from police officers as well as the police commissioner, and stories that involve an MTA bus-

today's show, we're going to talk about a bus crash that sent 16 people to the hospitals.

The city cannot hide the fact that we still have a problem with juvenile crime.

Also, the economy seems to be a topic that Republicans are avoiding, despite the fact that Donald Trump literally ran on this.

There's some new polling coming out about gerrymandering that suggests that Governor Moore may have definitely overplayed his hand on when it comes to this issue.

And we have a strange case which might be mistaken identity or racial profiling against black young men.

So starting this off, Euripse Morgan, I don't think it is possible for the city to hide the fact that despite all of the gains we've made, we still have a problem with juvenile crime.

And it's a big problem.

Oh, absolutely.

Critical condition, as in, and two of the teenagers apparently are also in critical condition, as in this could be life-altering, okay? This could be life-altering for some individuals that were just possibly going back and forth to work.

And because we are so laxed on the fact that juvenile crime in general, not just stealing cars, because of that, these things are happening every single day.

You know who I do wonder? I wonder if Senator Jill Carter heard about this story at all.

Because remember, we had her on a show a few years ago, and she's one of those that brought the Juvenile Justice Reform Act to the table, and they decided that they wanted to treat juveniles, even if they were 14, 15, 16, running around here with guns, they wanted to treat them like they're three-year-old toddlers that had no idea what was going on.

But we

begin with Keith Daniels

and a mother's frustrations over a juvenile crime.

Keith.

But having a look at that, and when you take into account there was a report that dropped earlier this evening, actually, via the ABC, and several others have picked it up as well, that said that this type of...

this youth crime reduction attempt now that we've seen in states like Victoria, they're failing.

They're not actually working.

They've plunged, I think, at least $40 million into these efforts to give to organisations and mentoring and case management programs to help these youth offenders.

And what they're actually seeing is that it's had the opposite effect, that the crime rates aren't dropping.

They've actually increased in record highs down in Victoria.

So what circumstances, what provisions, what opportunities and pathways do we have in this country to assist these youths to manage this youth crime situation and to tackle the fact that whatever we're doing isn't working?

Well,

So it's great.

We were talking a little bit earlier about, we had a news poll question Friday about youth crime and should we be harder on youth crime or should we focus more on rehabilitation? And I know this is a conversation that a lot of people are having about this concept of gentle parenting and have we become too soft perhaps in the way that we parent.

And joining us this morning to talk about this is Dr. Jean Clinton, who's a child psychiatrist, and just wrote a brilliant article for McMaster News, McMaster University.

And good morning, Jean.

I'm good.

This is so timely because there's a story that came out just last week here in Windsor.

And it's about the Windsor Police devoting more resources to address rise in youth crime, which we have absolutely seen rise and serious crimes.

You know, Jean, like, you know, this isn't your spray painting a wall or whatever, but, you know, car thefts and and, you know, really severe and dangerous crime.

But it so happens that Mr. Fagin now sometimes keeps a common lodging house and that, to appear respectable, he provides his pupils with pencils, oranges, memorandum books, or some small wares for sale.

He is still held in such awe by his satellites that they would go to prison to save him from the clutches of the law, and he passes amongst them by the endearing appellation of Father of Juvenile Crime.

The only way to reduce the amount is by an early transplantation of the youthful criminal to a better soil and a strict and determined execution of some law which shall punish either the cadgers who hold a property in these infant thieves or the parents who sacrifice them to their own selfish and unnatural profit.

End of section one.

It's mostly drink that does it with them.

Not desiring to bring the conversation to a personal issue, I professed myself anxious to have a look over, that proposition having already been made to me by my host, and to that end follow the foreman.

who precedes me up a flight of creaking stairs with a flaring candle which barely serves to reveal the discoloured paint upon the walls and the time-worn woodwork of the floors i am bound to say that the apartment specially retained by the proprietor for his own use is by no means the best example of cleanliness in the building but at the same time it must be remembered that none of the other rooms contain any other furniture than beds and bedding the walls are for the most part covered with common paper hangings of light clean patterns and both floors and staircases are evidently well swept and not unfrequently scrubbed duties which together with the bed-making are performed by the foreman with the assistance of another young man who has this evening taken his turn out in every room a printed notice is hung against the wall stating the number of beds which are allowed to be occupied in that room according to the requirements of the act for regulating common lodging-houses and the measurement of the government inspector assuredly not too much space is given to each sleeper and although there would be perhaps sufficient ventilation if the windows were allowed to remain open at the top such is the repugnance of the lodgers to cool air that even in this stifling night in a close neighbourhood they carefully fasten up every aperture and one irritable inmate exhorts us with imprecations not to leave that adjective door open two large dilapidated old tenements have been thrown into one or rather united by a landing leading from one to the other and by a communication between the back yards such repairs as are necessary have been effected and have i understand cost a considerable sum but every foot of space has been made available and as there are rooms at all sorts of queer angles and up little supplementary flights of stairs and at the end of unexpected passages the effect to an unaccustomed visitor is a little confusing especially as the general resemblance of the apartments to each other is not counteracted by any change of furniture some of the rooms however are larger than others the most commodious holding eight or ten beds the smaller ones only four the bedsteads are all of one barrack pattern that of the cut-down wooden stump and the bedding consists of flock mattresses coarse sheets blankets and rugs but no pillows a bolster answering the purpose these articles are in fact mostly returned military stores and other cheap bedding picked up at second-hand down the lane by which is meant petticoat lane sometimes known by its more genteel name of middlesex street where the jew brokers deal in everything from a surgeon's lancet to a saddleback boiler or from a child's old shoe to a diamond snuff-box up and down the stairs which grow narrower as i ascend and along passages where sometimes the boards bend beneath my tread i am conducted to the topmost story which is only reached by a high flight of new steps steep as those of a ship's hold and known to the lodgers as jacob's ladder what can be the motive for some of the customers preferring the rooms to which this leads as i am informed they do is matter of conjecture but it is assuredly a place in which nobody would desire to find himself without a light unless he had some strong reason for the preference i see no angels coming and going upon this ladder which is named after that of the patriarch's dream but i see many faces as i pass through the rooms where the lodgers are some of them already asleep more than one half hidden by the bedclothes peer out keenly and with a look of wistful inquiry which is not altogether free from anxious fear others stare with a dogged indifference others again are relaxed in sleep while one which is deadly pale and lighted by bloodshot angry eyes belongs to a man who is a confirmed drunkard and not having money to buy gin drinks the naphtha-like spirits which he uses in his work mixed with a jug of water which stands even now beside his bed in almost every room faces watchful stupid anxious weary dogged aggressive cunning with each and every variety of expression but with miserable poverty if not crime plainly visible in by far the larger number look at me as i pass or turn heavily round in sleep in one room the single tenant who is sitting up in bed making an ineffectual effort to turn his shirt says in a drunken voice that he's not wanted evidently associating my visit with the police and immediately afterwards falls into the verse of a comic song in the midst of which i leave him to darkness and himself down by another staircase into a large paved yard of a dark and melancholy appearance furnished with a shed where there is water and a sink but no towel since a former experiment in that direction led to the last one being stolen down another short flight of stone steps as loose and irregular as those of a cathedral turret round a sharp corner through a half-opened door and i am in the kitchen A large stone-paved place occupying the entire basement of one of the houses its walls whitewashed and its low ceiling crossed with beams at the further end a large wide range in which a good fire is burning and on the hearth a tin pot a gridiron and a toasting fork for the convenience of those who have anything to cook or desire to drink warm beer on this sultry night sitting on forms drawn up to the two or three rough deal tables or taken to the wall for the greater convenience of leaning against it such lodgers as have brought in food with them uncover it in a deliberate secret manner as though they objected to reveal its quality and eat it in a stealthy way which seems to impart a relish to it whatever it is there is but little of it and to-night at least the fire is but little used for culinary purposes at the middle table a party is playing at all fours with a pack of greasy cards and those who are not watching or disputing about the game either sit listlessly about the room lounge on the forms or speak together in muttered tones here and there are gathered three or four lads or men who seem to know each other and occasionally a burst of laughter a rough joke or even the momentary excitement of a fight will create a diversion but for the most part the lodgers are moody listless and somewhat suspicious in their bearing so much so that it strikes me that they are no better off in this respect than the politer society from which they are excluded and that their reunions have a general resemblance to some other parties at which i have been present in as much as everybody must feel bedtime a relief from the oppression of a simulated conviviality if any one thing is farthest from my thoughts at this moment than any other it is the sea and yet i am presently making the voyage to china in a large trading ship and have just stepped into the second mate's cabin to be more circumstantial i have turned round a corner of the great kitchen on my way out and have been invited by my guide to look at his drawing-room the place which he is pleased thus to designate is a place of some six feet square which may formerly have been a large closet and is so situated that while it commands the entrance to the kitchen it is out of sight and in a measure out of sound of what is going on there this i learn is where he sometimes sits during his nightly duty for it is his business to keep awake and pretty wide awake too till the earliest lodgers begin to stir abroad a regulation not altogether unnecessary in an establishment where the street door is always open and threepence down entitles any man or boy to tumble into the first unoccupied bed he happens to find in his way to make a sort of bower not in the horticultural but the boudoir sense in a little whitewashed closet at the corner of a common lodging-house kitchen is i make bold to say a stroke of genius which beats stage transformation scenes all to nothing and yet here it is as wonderfully suggestive a snuggery as it has ever been my lot to visit i'm not sure that there isn't a sofa in it at all events there is some contrivance which looks like one and there is a chair and a table and a shelf of books and another shelf of sea-shells and a collection of stones and bright knick-knacks of very little value to anybody but the owner but god only knows of how much value to him and coloured pictures and prints and gay engravings from our old friend the illustrated news and a flute or i am much mistaken but certainly something in the shape of music peeping from behind one of the shelves and a score of odds and ends which never could be catalogued even in a broker's inventory to which fate heaven grant they may never approach there is something so delightful in the sudden revelation of such a place it is so small that we can't both sit down in it and the atmosphere of the kitchen is at the present moment about equal to that of a small bakehouse when the batch is being drawn that i almost lose myself for a moment in a sea-dream minus a whiff or two of briny breeze and determining to see no more that can destroy so pleasing an impression call in upon the proprietor who is still sitting in his bower under an umbrageous canopy of worsted stockings and take my leave end of section ten section eleven of the pauper the thief and the convict by thomas archer this librivox recording is in the public domain read by peter yearsley chapter nine the house of correction having learned from those interesting tables to be found in blue books that notwithstanding all my observations in pauper london and notably in thief london the proportion of juvenile crime during the last year has shown a satisfactory decrease when considered in relation to the increase of population and the statistics of adult criminality that in england and wales the commitments of offenders under sixteen years of age were in eighteen sixty two eight thousand three hundred and forty nine and last year the number had only increased to eight thousand four hundred and fifty nine while in scotland the returns present an actual diminution There were in Scotland 1,120 commitments in 1862, while in 1863 there were 1,075.

That on the whole of Great Britain there was an increase of less than 1%, which is considerably below what the increase of the population would naturally produce.

...

the Office of Juvenile and Justice Delinquency.

And so-

That's a trick, [laughs] right?