Six alternatives to youth incarceration in Canada – rabble.ca [2023-07-27]

Evidence shows putting children behind bars leads to overall worse general adult health, higher recidivism rates and lower life expectancies. Despite this, Canada continues to jail youth by the tens of thousands each year.

But a new report from the Sentencing Project presents six effective alternatives to child incarceration. While their findings reflect American statistics, it offers a blueprint for Canada to adopt some alternatives of its own.

Last year, Statistics Canada reported a dramatic and unprecedented decline in the number of incarcerated youth in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a decrease of 27 per cent, Canada has already demonstrated there are safe alternatives to incarcerating young people in the name of health, safety and human rights.

Those numbers marked the largest drop in youth incarceration since the Youth Criminal Justice Act came into effect, reaching its lowest point in February 2021 with 449 youth incarcerated.

Additionally, the average daily count of young people in jail awaiting trial went down by one quarter from March 2020 to March 2021. During that time period, over 10,000 youth were admitted to correctional facilities.